UP to promote start-up ventures of women, transgender entrepreneurs

The state has created a Rs 1,000 crore start-up fund to be managed by Sidbi

The Uttar Pradesh government will promote start-up ventures of women, transgender and ‘divyangjan’ (differently-abled) entrepreneurs under the new UP Startup Policy 2020 with additional incentives and institutional support.

“This is one of its kind initiatives by any state government in India to bring these communities into the mainstream of the business world through startup ecosystem,” a state government spokesperson said here today.

Under the new Policy, the government is targetting to set up 100 incubators covering all the 75 districts in UP with the goal of generating 150,000 employment and self employment opportunities, including 50,000 direct jobs in the state.

The new Policy was cleared by the state cabinet last month, while the UP government is targetting to break into the top three startup congenial states in India. On May 20, chief minister Yogi Adityanath had also launched the UP Startup Fund to be managed by the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

Meanwhile, the Startup Fund has already started gaining traction, and it will soon start disbursing growth capital to UP based startups.

“The much talked about Fund has garnered interest from leading Venture Funds/AIF (alternative investment fund) of the country. SIDBI has so far received four applications from leading AIFs for an aggregate amount of Rs 285 crore to create the initial corpus,” the spokesperson informed.

The decision on these applications will be taken by SIDBI and the Startup Nodal Agency in its first Venture Capital Investment Committee (VCIC) meeting scheduled later this month.

So far, the government has released Rs 41 lakh to the Startup Nodal Agency to be disbursed among startups and incubators whose proposals were approved by the Policy Implementation Committee (PIU).

The funding will be disbursed in the form of sustenance allowance at idea stage, seed capital assistance at commercialisation stage and capital grant to incubators for strengthening the IT infrastructure.

Besides, a corpus of Rs 150 crore has also been set up by the Adityanath government with the help of Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU) to fund startups at the stage of ideation, patent registration, participation in domestic and international events etc.

“The new Policy since its launch has been lauded by the stakeholders of the startup ecosystem and hailed as a great catalyst for creating self-employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for the state’s youth,” a government statement claimed.

It mentioned that the CM’s concern for regional imbalance in UP, especially in the Bundelkhand and Purvanchal regions, had been addressed in the Startup Policy by offering additional incentives for startups and incubators operating from these regions. “This will help in democratising the startup ecosystem across the state which so far was heavily dominated by tier 1 cities like Noida.” 

Besides, a UP Angel Network and an online system were created for fresh entrepreneurs.