It has been a year since the Rs 10,000 crore Start Up India fund was announced with much fanfare to promote entrepreneurship. The government announced its completion with full page advertisement in some newspapers.
What did the initiative achieve? Not many are wiser a year later on who got the funds or which startups benefitted from it. On account of the limited visibility of the programme, no one is in the know of what the program achieved. “The 10,ooo crore fund started off on a bang with its announcement but one does not really know what the initiative did for the sector,” said Ankur Bisen, Senior Vice President, Teknopak Advisors.
The intention of the government vis-a-vis the fund was laudable though. When it was announced, the government said that the fund is “expected to generate employment for 18 lakh persons on full deployment… A corpus of Rs 10,000 crore could potentially be the nucleus for catalysing Rs 60,000 crore of equity investment and twice as much debt investment.” However, it did not mention how the funds were to be disbursed.
“Who are the beneficiaries,” asks Manish Taneja, Co-Founder, Purplle.com, beauty and grooming e-commerce platform, which raised Series A investment in 2015 and an undisclosed amount recently. “Nothing much has changed for startups,” he said.
A year down the line there is an advertisement in newspapers today quoting a flurry of numbers: That it has recognised over 500 startups, 118 incubators, 257 tinkering labs were sanctioned under the Atal Innovation Mission, over 170 startups were mentored for incubation and funding support. That it was easier to access funds through relaxed rules for angel funds and foreign venture capitalists, etc. However, no names of the startups or any other beneficiaries is still known in the public domain. An entrepreneur and a mentor who spoke on condition of anonymity remarked the announcement generated a lot of hype but the government did…