Kerala's startup ecosystem will get a boost following the state government's allocation of more than Rs 200 crore to the sector in its budget presented today, a senior official said.
Startup Village Chairman Sanjay Vijayakumar said the amount exceeds the combined allocation to Kerala's flagship IT Parks -- Technopark (Rs 76 crore), Infopark (Rs 62 crore) and Cyber Park (Rs 26 crore).
"The state government has sent across a strong message that it supports young people's aspirations to move from a culture of job seeking to that of job creation and innovation.
"We are ready to move from a fear-based risk averse society to a risk-taking, innovation-driven society," he said.
The budget, presented by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the state assembly today, has increased the allocation to Kerala Startup Mission by 50 per cent from Rs 40 crore last year to Rs 60 crore. The seedfund for startups has been doubled from Rs 6 crore to Rs 12 crore.
The Performance Linked Incentive Scheme for startups has seen an increase of over 100 per cent from Rs 12 crore to Rs 25 crore.
The Entrepreneurship Support Scheme has been allocated Rs 45 crore, the same as last year and the Self Employment Scheme for socially marginalised women has been granted Rs 16 crore.
The allocation for startup programmes such as Raspberry Pi and Startup Box has increased by 33 per cent from Rs 30 crore last year to Rs 40 crore this time.
The government has additionally introduced a new scheme for Women Entrepreneurship with Rs 8 crore for common infrastructure and Rs 5 crore for finance options.
The total corpus for development of start-ups rises further when taking into account allocations for other schemes that also promote innovation and entrepreneurship.
