The union cabinet has approved the establishment of ‘Fund of Funds for Startups’ (FFS) at Sidbi for contribution to various Alternative Investment Funds (AIF), registered with Sebi, which would extend funding support to startups. The FFS will have a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore which shall be built up over the 14th and 15th Finance Commission cycles subject to progress of the scheme and availability of funds. An amount of Rs 500 crore has already been provided to the corpus of FFS in 2015-16 and Rs.600 crore earmarked in the 2016-17. The fund is expected to generate employment for 18 lakh persons on full deployment, according to a press release. The expertise of Sidbi would be utilized to manage the day to day operations of the FFS. The monitoring and review of performance would be linked to the implementation of the Start Up Action Plan to enable execution as per timelines and milestones.
