Soon startups across India can approach Karnataka govt for funds

Soon startups and entrepreneurs across the country can seek help from Karnataka government to run their startups. Taking Karnataka startup policy to the national level, the state government is all set to fund tech-focused startups by asking them to register in Karnataka to avail the facilities.

According to ET report, IT minister Priyank Kharge told that entrepreneurs can apply to the Karnataka government for funds provided they register the companies here under the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishment Act, 1961.

The Karnataka Startup Policy was launched in 2015, with a vision to stimulate the growth of 20,000 technology-based startups with a corpus of over Rs 300 crore by 2020.

So far about 5,000 startups have registered with the Karnataka government under the policy, and the state had given funds to 250 firms in 2017.

In May last year, the state government launched Elevate programme to reach and aid at least 1,000 start-ups from smaller cities and towns over the next two months.

Under the Elevate programme, the government also announced that it will include provisions to allow startups to bid for government projects, and had picked up 100 most innovative start-ups after following through a four-layered selection process. The initiative also attracted 350 women entrepreneurs and 400 applicants from the rural areas.

Selected startups also promised to get a funding support of about Rs 35 crore from the government to pursue their tech-ideas and scale them up.

Earlier, Mangaluru, India’s first startup district was promised to get Rs 1.18 crore fund from Nirmala Sitharaman, the then Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry.

Sitharaman had proposed declaring Mangaluru as India’s first startup district. On her initiation, the centre had decided to locate incubators at two reputed institutes in the region under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.