In a bid to boost the start-up ecosystem, Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) will provide a total of ₹4.32 crore grant for start-ups in the State.
The grant was announced at the concluding session of the sixth edition of ‘Seeding Kerala’ here on Saturday. It will consist of ₹3.5 crore as ‘productisation grant’ for 52 start-ups and ₹82 lakh as ‘idea grant’ for 41 innovators.
The two-day virtual event organised by KSUM focused on start-up ecosystems beyond the country’s metropolises and tier-1 cities. Four start-ups bagged investment opportunities at the event, which was conceived in tune with Startup Bharat.
Speaking at the valedictory function, Mohammed Y. Safirulla, Additional Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, said the State government had made a lot of interventions to boost start-up investments.
“We have partnered with four funds under the Fund of Fund scheme and ensured fund availability of around ₹750 crore. The government has approved more than ₹15 crore and disbursed ₹12 crore to 298 innovators till date. Last year, KSUM granted ₹1.54 crore to 61 innovators,” he said.
“We have supported more than 100 start-ups through seed loans of around ₹18 crore. We granted nearly ₹2.3 crore to 21 start-ups during the pandemic period in 2020. We are in the process of releasing another ₹4.5 crore to 97 start-ups as grants,” he added.
In his keynote address, Raman Roy, chairman and managing director, Quatrro Global Services Pvt. Ltd., said despite the pandemic, technology start-ups continued to expand steadily at 8% to 10% in the country.
