Categories
Finance Startup

Women-Led Businesses in India Get Major Boost As Visa Announces Grants To Empower Budding Businesswomen

New Delhi, February 8: In a bid to boost women entrepreneurship globally and empower budding businesswomen, Visa on Monday announced the recipients of its grant programme in India. This would be Visa’s first global grant programme which will be in partnership with several startups that are led by woman entrepreneurs. Visa has partnered with IFundWomen, Bunko Junko, My Chapter One and MoWo Social Initiatives, where each one received a Rs 7,00,000 grant from Visa.

Resources from Instamojo will grow their businesses digitally, in a continued effort to offer better services to their communities. In a statement, Kevin Phalen, global head of business solutions, Visa that  access to funding, educational resources and a digital presence are fundamental building blocks that will help small businesses get back to not only surviving, but thriving.

Women-owned enterprises in India have grown from 14 percent to 20 percent in the past decade and employ between 22 to 27 million people.

  1. Highlighting this growth in women-led startups in India, Visa received applications from hundreds of businesses across the country in sectors including apparel and fashion, healthcare and wellness, food and beverages and art and events.
  2. The company evaluated 16 semi-finalists by a jury panel comprising senior leaders across Visa, FICCI FLO (FICCI Ladies’ Organization) and Instamojo. The final winners were selected based on the count of jury votes.

In addition to the grants, Instamojo, the digitization partner, is providing the winners with tools and resources to help build their digital presence.

Categories
Startup

Startups in India Get a Major Boost As Govt Allocates Rs 830 Crore for Fund of Funds for Startups in Union Budget 2021–22

New Delhi, February 3: With an aim to give a major fillip to the startups in India, the government has allocated Rs 830 crore for the ‘Fund of Funds for Startup’s in the Budget 2021-22. This is higher then the revised estimate of about Rs 430 crore. The government has set up a Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore. The Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) is the operating agency for the FFS.

According to the Budget documents, the allocation for Startup India programme has been increased slightly to Rs 20.83 crore for 2021-22 from the revised estimate of Rs 20 crore in 2020-21.The government’s Startup India initiative aims at fostering entrepreneurship and promoting innovation by creating an ecosystem that is conducive to the growth of budding entrepreneurs. The allocation for the fund of funds in Budget 2020-21 was Rs 1,054.97 core, but it was later revised to Rs 429.99 crore.

Moreover, the government has earmarked Rs 300 crore for credit guarantee fund. The cumulative allocation for the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has been hiked to Rs 7,782.24 crore for 2021-22 as against the revised estimate of Rs 7,583.06 crore in 2020-21. Similarly, the cumulative allocation for the department of commerce has also been increased to Rs 4,986 crore for 2021-22 as against the revised estimate of Rs 4,600 crore in 2020-21.

The total allocations for export promotion schemes, such as Market Access Initiative and Interest Equalisation Scheme, has been increased to Rs 2,365 crore for 2021-22 as against the revised estimate of Rs 2,175 crore in 2020-21.