New Delhi: The government has earmarked Rs.600 crore for Financial Year 2016-17 under Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS). As a Fund of Funds, FFS would not invest directly in Startups, but would participate in the capital of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) registered Alternate Investment Funds (AIF). Earlier, the government had approved the setting up of Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) with a corpus of Rs. 10,000 crore. An amount of Rs.500 crore was released in the Financial Year 2015-16 to Small lndustries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) to start its operations.

Fund of Funds is designed to support 18 lakh jobs in startup companies. FFS would be sector agnostic enabling it to support a broad mix of startups set up by all categories of people. The startup fund will act as a catalyst to attract private capital by way of equity, quasi-equity, soft loans and other risk capital for start-up companies.

This information was given by Minister of State for Finance Mr Arjun Ram Meghwal yesterday (22 July 2016) in reply to a Lok Sabha question.