Giving a big boost to the startup ecosystem, Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) has announced a grant of Rs4.32 crore for the startups in the State.

The grant, announced at the concluding session of the sixth edition of ‘Seeding Kerala’, consists of Rs 3.5 crore as productization grant for 52 startups and Rs 82 lakh as Idea Grant for 41 innovators.

The two-day virtual event focused on start-up ecosystems beyond the country’s metropolises and tier-1 cities. KSUM conducted the event that aimed at better awareness about angel investment and encourage funding by high net-worth individuals.

Four startups bagged investment opportunities at the event, which was conceived in tune with Startup Bharat.

Kochouseph Chittilappilly, Chairman, Emeritus, V-Guard Industries Ltd., will invest in travel startup Verteil Technologies Private Limited.

Ubifly, a startup that builds electric planes to break-open inefficiencies in both cargo and passenger transportation, got investment from deep-tech venture capitalist Speciale Invest.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based insurtech startup Fedo bagged investments from Unicorn India Ventures and Sea Fund. Rapidor, which runs a single-window platform for SMEs to manage their sales orders, inventory, invoice, and payment collections, found their investor in Davidsons Group.

Mohammed Y Safirulla, Additional Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, said the government has taken lot of interventions to boost the startup investments in the state.

“We have partnered with four Funds under Fund of Fund scheme and ensured availability of around Rs 750 crore. The Government has approved more than Rs 15 crore and disbursed Rs 12 crore to 298 innovators till date. Last year, KSUM supported Rs 1.54 crore to 61 innovators,” he said.

“We have supported more than 100 startups through seed loans around Rs18 crore. We have granted around Rs 2.3 crore to 21 startups during the pandemic period in 2020. We are in the process of releasing another Rs 4.5 crore funds to 97 startups as grants,” he added.

KSUM, the nodal agency of the Kerala Government for entrepreneurship development and incubation activities in the state, undertakes planning, establishment and management of technology business incubators and accelerators so as to promote technology-based ventures by creating the infrastructure and environment.

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