New Delhi, 22 June (KNN) Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) under Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) has supported 249 startups as on June 13, 2019, said Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry.

In a written reply to Rajya Sabha, he said “Government of India has established Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) to meet the funding needs of startups and Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is the monitoring agency and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) is the operating agency for FFS.

According to guidelines issued by DPIIT, FFS contributes to the corpus of SEBI registered Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs). These AIFs in turn have to invest at least twice the contribution under FFS in startups, as defined by the Government of India.

Each AIF sets up its own Investment Committee and the investment Committee of each Fund takes a decision on its investment decisions, he added.

The investment committee (IC) of each AIF, comprising of investment experts drawn from different domains takes decisions on investing into particular startup. These decisions are largely a matter of business decisions which depend on a host of factors like uniqueness, innovativeness, intellectual property and business potential.

A formal mechanism has been put to review progress of Startup India program on regular basis and the Monitoring Committee continuously reviews progress and implementation of various measures for growth of startup ecosystem, said Goyal.