Govt approves Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0 with Rs 10,000 cr corpus

New Delhi (PTI): The government on Friday approved the second tranche of Startup India Fund of Funds Scheme with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore.

This will encourage startups in early stages and deep-tech research, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a social media post.

On his first day at Seva Teerth, the prime minister's new office, Modi signed files that are connected with the empowerment of the poor, downtrodden, farmers, Yuva Shakti and Nari Shakti.

The key decisions include "approval for a Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0 with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore," said the post.

The Prime Minister on Friday shifted to his new office Seva Teerth from the colonial-era South Block building near Rashtrapati Bhavan on Raisina Hill. The shift came on a day -- February 13 -- that marked 95 years since the formal inauguration of New Delhi as India's modern capital in 1931.

The government in 2016 had constituted a Fund of Funds worth Rs 10,000 crore to provide seed capital and enable startups take calculated risks.

Following the successful utilisation of the first tranche, a second phase of Rs 10,000 crore was sanctioned in the Union Budget for 2025-26.

So far over 2 lakh entities are recognised as startups by Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). These entities are eligible for incentives under the startup India action plan.

The scheme was set up to catalyze venture capital investments and is operationalized by Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), which provides capital to Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)-registered AIFs, which in turn invest in startups.

AIFs supported under Fund of Funds Scheme (FFS) are required to invest at least two times the amount committed under FFS in startups.

DPIIT is the monitoring agency and SIDBI is the operating agency for FFS.