Under the Startup India initiative, the Government constantly undertakes various efforts for the development and growth of the startup ecosystem in the country. The flagship schemes namely, Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS), Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS) and Credit Guarantee Scheme for Startups (CGSS) support startups at various stages of their business cycle to enable startups to graduate to a level to raise investments from angel investors or venture capitalists or seek loans from commercial banks or financial institutions. As a result, there are more than 1.43 Lakh DPIIT recognised startups operating in India as of 31 July, 2024.

Initiatives taken by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (‘MeitY’) in this direction are as follows:

I. Technology Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE 2.0) Scheme: MeitY initiated TIDE 2.0 scheme in 2019 with an outlay of Rs 264.62 Crores over a period of 5 years. It extends financial and technical support institutes of higher learning and premier R&D organizations engaged in supporting ICT startups using emerging technologies. Till date 51 TIDE 2.0 Incubation Centres  have been supported and made operational.

II. Startup Accelerator of MeitY for Product Innovation, Development, and Growth (SAMRIDH) Scheme: The SAMRIDH Scheme was launched to support existing and upcoming accelerators to select and accelerate potential IT-based start-ups to scale to solve India’s technological challenges and hence creating a positive social impact. The SAMRIDH scheme will provide support to selected accelerators for extending accelerator services to start-ups along with one-to-one matching funding support of up to INR 40 lakh. In the first round of cohort, 22 accelerators of the country have been selected across 14 states and 12 cities to support 175 startups. These accelerators comprise of Government Supported Organizations, Academic Institutions, Corporate Accelerators & Investment Firms.

III. Next Generation Incubation Scheme (NGIS): NGIS has been approved to support software product ecosystem and to address a significant portion of National Policy on Software Product (NPSP) 2019. The Scheme is proposed to be launched from 12 locations i.e. Agartala, Bhilai, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Dehradun, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow & Prayagraj, Mohali/Chandigarh, Patna & Vijayawada. The Scheme has solution oriented architecture and aims to handhold 300 Tech Start-ups in Tier-2/3 cities over a period of 3 years with the total budget outlay of ₹ 95.03 Crores.

IV. Domain specific Centres of Excellence (CoEs): MeitY has envisaged and operationalised 42 Centres Of Excellence (CoEs) in diverse areas of national interest for driving self-sufficiency and creating capabilities to capture new and emerging technology areas. These domain specific CoEs act as enablers and aid in making India an innovation hub in emerging technologies through democratisation of innovation and realisation of prototypes.

V. Theme based Incubation Centre: To bring innovation led Electronic system and design manufacturing, Entrepreneur Parks have been established through STPI New Delhi, Makers Village in Cochin Kerala, IIIT Patna and Government of Bihar on Medical Electronics and Fabless chip design incubation centre at IIT Hyderabad.

Government has supported about 10,000+ tech startups through various startup support schemes/programmes being implemented by relevant line-Ministries/ Departments in the last five years with a total funding disbursed approximately ₹ 580 Crore to startups through incubators including 3600+ tech startups supported by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) with a total funding disbursed of ₹ 212 Crore.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Electronic & Information Technology, Shri  Jitin Prasada in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

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PPG/KS