In the 2014 Union Budget of India, finance minister Arun Jaitley announced Rs 10,000 crore startup fund for new businesses and startups in India however since then whole of the startup industry was puzzled that where exactly does this money go and how can Indian entrepreneurs benefit from it?, and after more than two years of the announcement nobody even know where and how this fund has been utilized so far.

Surprisingly, Modi government on Wednesday filled the Indian startup industry with cheer as it sanctioned the much awaited Rs 10,000 crore 'Fund of Funds for Startups'. The fund is one of the steps taken by the Central government towards boosting self-employment in the country — a move that is part of a larger initiative, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project ‘Startup India Action Plan’, which he unveiled himself in the month of January this year.

Still a riddle, question arise as how come a fund announced in 2014 took more than two years of time to get sanctioned and now as a next step how much time would it take to get implemented on grass root level as its sanctioning itself took more than a couple of years.

According to an official statement issued by the government, the fund sanctioned is expected to generate employment opportunities for 18 lakh Indians and that too on full deployment. Further, the government is quite hopeful that this dedicated 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.

The fund was given a green flag after a decision was made for the same in a recent Union Cabinet meeting which was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.

"The Cabinet has approved the establishment of 'Fund of Funds for Startups' (FFS) at Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) for contribution to various Alternative Investment Funds (AIF), registered with SEBI which would extend funding support to startups," said the official statement.

The statement issued also mentioned that the Fund has been built up over the 14th and 15th cycles of the Finance Commission. This has been done in order to provide startup enterprises with a funding source that is much for stable, reliable and predictable.

According to information available with us, the Modi government is committed to its this mission and has already approved and sanctioned a sum of Rs 500 crore for the project in the financial year 2015-16 and earmarked Rs 600 crore for the current financial year i.e. 2016-17.

In order to keep a check on the project's progress, the government is also making provisions to grant assistance through gross budgetary Support by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), which will then review and monitor the project's performance in alignment with the central government's 'Start up India Action Plan'.

According to initial reactions of industry experts, this move by the central government can be of much help to Indian startups which have to face several hardships such as limitations of the conventional bank finance, information asymmetry, lack of hand holding support from agencies that are credible and limited availability of domestic risk capital.
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