Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has announced that 254 start-ups have received an investment of over Rs 1,700 crore from Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) registered Alternative Investment Funds (AIF). He also informed that the central government has also set up the Fund of Funds for Start-ups (FFS) with the corpus of Rs 10,000 crore.
He informed in the Lok Sabha that the FFS will help in meeting the funding needs of the start-ups. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade is the monitoring agency and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) is the operating agency for FFS, he said.
“The total corpus of Rs 10,000 crore is envisaged to be provided over the 14th and 15th Finance Commission cycles based on the progress of the scheme and availability of funds. As on July 10, 2019, the SIDBI has committed Rs 3123.20 crore to 47 SEBI registered Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs),” he said.
The minister further said these funds have raised a corpus fund of Rs 25,728 crore. “Further, the AIFs have invested a total of Rs 1,701.03 crore into 254 start-ups out of which Rs 512.57 crore have been drawn from Fund of Funds for Start-ups,” he said.
