Defence ministry plans to fund promising start-ups using an offsets fund

Secretary of defence production said the DOF will be modelled on the successful Electronics Development Fund

To fund promising defence start-ups, the defence ministry intends to canalise money that accrues from the discharge of offsets into a Defence Offsets Fund (DOF), and leverage that with market funding. 

Describing the plan for the first time, Secretary for Defence Production Ajay Kumar said the DOF will be modelled on the successful Electronics Development Fund (EDF), which kicked off in 2015 during his previous assignment in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

The EDF is a “Fund of Funds” contributing 15 per cent of the value of professionally managed “Daughter Funds”, required to raise the remaining 85