Focus on start-ups from small cities: Piyush Goyal to venture funds

Global venture capital funds should focus more on start-ups from tier 2 and 3 cities, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said while chairing a roundtable with global venture capital funds on Friday.

The minister invited venture capitalists (VCs) to explore new sectors for investing, promoting, and protecting young Indian entrepreneurs’ intellectual property and urged them to provide expertise to scale up and explore greater capital infusion, including risk capital.

Goyal said the government had taken a number of steps to support start-ups and would continue to do so.

India is home to more than 61,000 recognised start-ups spread across 55 industries, with 45 per cent of them emerging from tier 2 and 3 cities. For the start-up ecosystem, the government has undertaken 49 regulatory reforms to enhance ease of doing business, ease of raising capital and reduce compliance burden.

The roundtable was held through video conference as part of the Startup India Innovation Week. A number of suggestions were made by them to further the investors' sentiment in the sector. “These funds have total assets under management of more than $30 billion in the Indian region,” Goyal said.