NEW DELHI: Information technology (IT) minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Tuesday assured start-ups that government is laser-focused on helping them tide over this crisis. The minister, while interacting with over 450 start-ups on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), said the government is exploring if any credit lines can be made available in US dollar or Indian rupees.
The government is also trying to facilitate transfer of US dollar deposits to Indian banks. “We will share list of suggestions with the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and explore how best your concerns can be addressed. We will also explore how smoothly we can facilitate the transfer of your US dollar deposits
to Indian banks, IFSC centred foreign banks or any other Indian bank, which has presence in the US,” said Chandrasekhar.
This consultation was part of the government’s approach to address the situation and offer any assistance to members of India’s innovation and start-up ecosystem who had financial holdings in SVB. Start-ups like Zoth.Io, Hatica.Io and venture capital (VC) and financial service providers like Blume VC and Mirae Asset were part of the meet. A few start-ups shared their concern over transferring their US dollar deposits to India and to US-based branches of Indian banks. During the meeting, there were many interesting solutions proposed, including deposit-backed credit lines.
A few suggested that the Indian banks in the US should engage and support startups proactively via new product offerings. For those start-ups whose deposits were going to be made whole, but have no access to it currently, the government is exploring if any credit lines can be made available in US dollar or Indian rupees.
“We will also try to see if more credit products like in the United States, can be made available to you and make it easier for them to move from SVB to any other Indian Bank in the US,” said the minister.
Chandrasekhar also assured the start-ups that they could approach CEO, MeiTY Startup Hub for any problems/issues that they were facing and the government would do its best to help out.