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Good practice Imported

Startup India Seed Fund Scheme — National Incubator-Delivered Seed Capital

India · New Delhi · See the India profile · See the New Delhi profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 50% 67/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

India's Rs945-crore Startup India Seed Fund Scheme channels early-stage grants through ~300 accredited incubators; by December 2024 it had supported over 2,600 startups with Rs467.75 crore, with women-led ventures receiving close to half of approved funding.

945 INR crore (~US$113M)
Total scheme corpus
~300 incubators
Incubators allocated funds
477.25 INR crore
Approved to incubators, Dec 2022 (Dec 2022)
211.63 INR crore
Disbursed to startups, Dec 2022 (Dec 2022)
2,600+ startups
Startups supported, Dec 2024 (Dec 2024)
467.75 INR crore
Cumulative disbursed, Dec 2024 (Dec 2024)
~294 INR crore (of 592 crore approved)
Approved funding to women-led ventures (Dec 2024)

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Government of India
Period
2021-ongoing
Keywords
startup finance, seed funding, incubation, entrepreneurship, women-led enterprise

Context

Announced in the 2021 Union Budget and operated by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS) provides early-stage startups with grants of up to Rs20 lakh for proof-of-concept work and up to Rs50 lakh in convertible debt for market entry and scale-up.

Activities

Rather than funding startups directly, DPIIT allocates the scheme's Rs945 crore (~US$113 million) corpus to roughly 300 DPIIT-approved incubators, which screen applicants and disburse funds locally, aiming to eventually reach around 3,600 startups.

Results

By December 2022, Rs477.25 crore had been approved to 133 incubators with Rs211.63 crore actually disbursed; by December 2024, more than 2,600 startups had received a cumulative Rs467.75 crore, and over 1,200 of them — close to half — were women-led, with roughly Rs294 crore of the Rs592 crore approved to date going to women-led ventures.

Conclusions

The two-step, incubator-mediated disbursement model has been consistently slower than the scheme's own targets: by 2024 the scheme had disbursed under half of its four-year Rs945 crore corpus, an honest limitation on how quickly this seed capital reaches the entrepreneurs it is meant to serve.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Very high (> €5M)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), ~300 DPIIT-accredited incubators

Conditions for success

  • Structured network of accredited incubators screening and disbursing funds locally
  • Explicit tracking and targeting of women-led ventures

Common failure modes

  • Disbursement has consistently lagged behind the scheme's own targets and incubator-level approvals
  • By 2024 under half of the four-year corpus had been disbursed

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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