NEW DELHI: Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Thursday said deposits close to $1 billion attributable to Indian startups were with the US-based Silicon Valley Bank. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was a key funding source for start-ups, has sent shockwaves across the global financial system.
During a Twitter live session, Chandrasekhar said he heard that over $200 million of startups’ deposits have been transferred to GIFT City bank. “I had kind of very empirically and anecdotally calculated that there was more than a billion dollars of startups’ capital as deposits. According to some, this is a conservative estimate. There were deposits in SVB that are attributable to Indian startups close to a billion or more,” the Minister of State for Electronics and IT said.
Chandrasekhar also said that he has taken up the issue of SVB failure with the Finance Minister on Wednesday and pitched for fine-tuning the Indian banking system as per the requirement of startups.
Responding to a query, he said the country’s semiconductor journey is going to begin in 2023.
“We are going to ground break a fab (chip-making plant). We are going to create packaging units in India and by the end of the financial year 2023, I think, there will be more than 50-55 design startups that are doing device design,” Chandrasekhar said. Chandrasekhar had recently assured the Indian startups of all help to tide over this crisis.
The minister, while interacting with over 450 startups on the collapse of SVB on Tuesday 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 the transfer of US dollar deposits to Indian banks. During the meeting, a few startups shared their concern about transferring their US Dollar deposits to India, and to US-based branches of Indian banks.
SVB failure sends shockwaves
Failure of SVB, a key funding source for start-ups, has sent shockwaves across the global financial system. During a Twitter live session, Chandrasekhar said he heard that over $200 million of start-ups’ deposits have been transferred to GIFT City bank