Goyal urges global VC funds to focus on startups in smaller cities

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday called upon the global venture capital funds to focus more on startups from tier 2 and 3 cities of the country and explore new sectors for investing. Chairing a roundtable with global venture capital (VC) funds, the minister said the government has already taken a number of steps to support startups and would do so in the future also.

Goyal invited the VC funds to explore new sectors for investing, promote and protect the intellectual property created by the young Indian entrepreneurs, provide expertise to scale up and explore greater capital infusion. India is home to over 61,000 recognised startups spread across 55 industries, with 45 per cent of them emerging from tier 2 and 3 cities.

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For the startup ecosystem, as many as 49 regulatory reforms have been undertaken by the government to enhance ease of doing business, ease of raising capital and reduce compliance burden. The roundtable was held through video conference as part of the Startup India Innovation Week. Over 75 VC fund investors from countries like the US, Japan, Korea, and Singapore participated in the deliberations.

“These funds have a total Assets Under Management (AUM) of more than USD 30 billion in the Indian region,” the commerce and industry ministry said. A number of suggestions were made by them to further the investors’ sentiment in the sector.