The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will extend Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) loan totalling Yen 23,697 million (about ₹01,336 crore) for promoting the start-up ecosystem and innovation in Telangana.
It will be JICA’s first such project supporting a State government to bolster the innovation and the start-up ecosystem through an ODA loan, the bilateral donor agency said in a release on signing of a loan agreement with the government of India. The objective is to discover and promote potential entrepreneurs, including women and those in rural areas, by providing capacity building, infrastructure development, financial support and market creation sub-projects. The aim is to empower the State government in addressing job creation and economic development challenges through innovative measures and the augmentation of the start-up ecosystem.
Additional Secretary to Centre’s Department of Economic Affairs Vikas Sheel and JICA India Chief Representative Saito Mitsunori signed the loan agreement, JICA said in a release. The project will be led by the Telangana government’s Information Technology, Electronics and Communications Department.
“Our initiative to promote start-ups and innovation in Telangana aims to enhance socio-economic development in the region, in collaboration with government of Telangana. This is the first project in which JICA supports promotion of start-up ecosystem and innovation by ODA loan in the world,” Mr. Mitsunori said.
The project will be addressed to each of the three enterprise growth stages of start-up ecosystem — Finding Entrepreneurs; Support for Startups and Commercialisation; and Support for Business Expansion. JICA will play a pivotal role in facilitating Japanese startups to venture into Telangana conducting Proof of Concept (PoC) for their businesses. The facilitation by JICA is anticipated to attract investments from Japanese companies, the agency said in the release.
