INDIA OF TOMORROW PROGRAMME (Syllabus: GS Paper 3 - Economy

Context: The Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE.CO), IIM Ahmedabad’s startup incubator and investor, has brought on board Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) as a limited partner to back its new accelerator fund for investing in early-stage deeptech startups.

Key Points

• The development bank currently holds a corpus of INR 10,000 Cr under its Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) scheme launched in 2016, investing in Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) which in turn invest in startups.

• The government-owned lender will contribute ?20 crore, or half of the fund’s total corpus. CIIE.CO will provide the rest.
• The fund will aim to invest in pre-seed stage deep-tech startups in the country.
• The partnership is a part of SIDBI’s programme titled India of Tomorrow, under which it collaborates with different incubators in India
• Through this, SIDBI aims to enable seed funding to startups in exchange for equity and promote deeptech and science-led innovation
• The primary focus of the initiative is to support the startups with mentorship, ideas and technologies needed for India’s 2047 goal of becoming self-reliant in tech-based products and services space.