Rs 1,000 cr fund for tech start ups, entrepreneurs: Govt

New Delhi, Feb 28: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today announced Rs 1,000 crore for promotion of start ups and entrepreneurs particularly in the technology sector.

"We are now seeing a growing interest in start ups. Experimenting in cutting edge technologies, creating value out of ideas, initiatives and creating them into scalable enterprises and businesses is at the core of our strategies," he said while presenting the Budget for 2015-16 in the Lok Sabha. The minister added that the IT-ITeS sector has raked in revenues of USD 119 billion in 2014-15 and directly employs about 40 lakh people.

"For engaging our youth for inclusive and sustainable growth of the country, concerns such as more liberal system of raising global capital, incubation facilities in our centres of excellence, funding for seed capital and the ease of doing business need to be addressed to create a lakh jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in value," Jaitley said.

He further said: "With this objective, the government is creating a mechanism known as Self Employment and Talent Utilisation (SETU) to be techno-financial incubation and facilitation programme to support all aspects of start up business and other self employment activities particularly in the technology driven areas. "I am setting aside Rs 1,000 crore initially for this purpose."

According to the Economic Survey 2014-15, India has emerged as the world's fourth largest hub for start-ups with over 3,100 of them, driven by "hyper growth" in technology and software products in the country. As per the Central Statistics Office (CSO), computer and related services, whose share GDP is 3.3 per cent, grew by 14.4 per cent in 2013-14.

While the export market grew by 12.3 per cent to USD 98 billion in 2014-15, the domestic IT-BPM market is estimated at USD 20.9 billion in 2014-15, with a growth of 10 per cent.

PTI