Following up on its budget announcements, the Central Government has approved the ‘Startup India Seed Fund Scheme’ (the “Scheme/SISFS”) and Guidelines for the same. The Scheme and Guidelines provide for financial assistance to startups to ensure easy availability of capital at the early stages of growth of an enterprise – for proof of concept, prototype development, product trials, market entry and commercialization. This will enable startups to graduate to raising funds from angel investors, venture capitalists, commercial banks or financial institutions.

A financial assistance via a corpus of Rs. 945 Crore will be disbursed through selected incubators across India during 2021-25. Each incubator will constitute an Incubator Seed Management Committee consisting of experts, who will select the startups for seed support)  based on a process and parameters for selection .

The Scheme is sector-agnostic and will support startups across all sectors.  It will have a central common application available on Startup India portal for both startups and incubators on an ongoing basis. It will be evaluated for its impact, especially on financial, social and economic returns by end of 2024-25.

The Scheme will be implemented by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. Both the Scheme and the Guidelines are available on the website of Startup India at https://www.startupindia.gov.in/.

To refer to the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, click here, to refer to the Guideline for the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, click here. To refer to a summary of the key features of Scheme and Guidelines, click here.