Number of startup beneficiaries under FFS comes down to 58 in 2017-18

The number of startup beneficiaries under the Fund of Fund Scheme has come down to 58 in 2017-18 from 62 in the previous fiscal, Parliament was informed today.

The government has established Rs 10,000 crore Fund of Funds for startups (FFS) to meet their funding needs.

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) is the monitoring agency and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) is the operating agency for the FFS.

So far in the current fiscal, 22 startups have been provided financial assistance under this scheme, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry C R Chaudhary said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. 

He also informed that as per the operating guidelines, the FFS contributes to the corpus of SEBI registered Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs). These AIFs in turn have to invest at least twice the contribution under FFS in startups. 

"The AIFs under FFS have supported 142 startups as on June 30," he said.

Under the 'Start-up India Action Plan', the government announced incentives, including tax holiday and inspector raj- free regime, besides capital gains tax exemption and Rs 10,000 crore corpus to fund them.