Start-ups looking for major stimulus in budget

February 28, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 05:46 am IST - KOCHI:

The Startup Village here is looking forward to a major stimulus for start-ups in the Union budget.

The young entrepreneurs are hoping that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will infuse new funds into start-up initiatives across the country.

Exuding confidence that the allocation would be higher this time, Pranav Kumar Suresh, chief executive officer of Startup Village, said that the government had announced Rs. 10,000 crore fund to boost capital flow to start-ups in the 2014-15 budget. “The key factor this time will be how these funds are going to be deployed. Any move to infuse funds through banks will fail as a business initiative and a startup venture are fundamentally different. Start-up is a human capital institution, a new idea in a risky environment where people are trying to do something new,” he said.

The Startup Village here has produced 533 start-ups and created 2,889 jobs by the end of 2014. The country’s first public-private partnership-based technology business incubator, which completed its 1,000th day on January 10, has claimed to have created one new entrepreneur a day, with total valuation of start-ups pegged at Rs. 292 crore.

An official release said here that 37 start-ups have raised Rs 27 crore in funding from angel investors, private backers and seed funds and 161 have raised initial seed money from friends and family. Since its inception on April 15, 2012 until December 2014, the internet-mobile incubator received a total of 6,491 application requests. A total of 960 (58 physical and 902 virtual start-ups) were incubated, of which 533 are currently active. Of the 58 physical start-ups, 56 are currently active and two failed. Of the 902 virtual start-ups, 477 are active and 355 inactive while 70 were shelved.

It witnessed a quarter-on-quarter growth of 40 per cent. As compared to 136 applications in the fourth quarter (Oct-December) of 2012, the cumulative number was 1,287 and 5,971 by the corresponding period of 2013 and 2014, respectively.

‘Any move to infuse funds through banks will fail as a business initiative.’

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