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India now has more than 1.4 lakh startups, as the government continues to nurture innovation and encourage investments in the ecosystem, Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Jitin Prasada, informed on Friday.

In a reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, the minister said that under the ‘Startup India’ initiative, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has recognised 1,40,803 entities as startups (as of June 30).

Over 55 regulatory reforms have been undertaken by the government since 2016 – when the ‘Startup India’ initiative was launched -- to enhance ease of doing business, ease of raising capital and reduce compliance burden for the startup ecosystem.

In the Union Budget 2024-2025, the Centre has abolished the angel tax on startups, paving the way for more foreign capital to be pumped into the ecosystem and further easing the funding winter.

Under the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS), Rs 945 crore was sanctioned for a period of 4 years starting from 2021-22, informed the minister.

The government also established the Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) scheme with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore, to meet the funding needs of startups.

DPIIT is the monitoring agency and the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) is the operating agency for FFS.

The Centre also established the credit guarantee scheme for startups for providing credit guarantees to loans extended to DPIIT-recognised startups by scheduled commercial banks, Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) and venture debt funds (VDFs) under SEBI-registered alternative investment funds.

According to reports, the Indian private equity and venture capital investments in 2023 stood at $39 billion compared to $62 billion in 2022.