Arun Jaitley Launches India Aspiration Fund and SMILE | Complete Report

The objective of SMILE scheme will be to provide soft loans in the nature of quasi-equity and term loans on relatively soft terms to MSMEs. He mentioned that the Fund is expected to catalyze tens of thousands of crore of equity investment in start-ups and MSMEs, creating employment for lakhs of persons, mostly educated youth, over the next 4-5 years.

Congress today demanded an apology from Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for raking up the role of Rajya Sabha in stalling government’s reforms agenda, insisting “redefining” Constitution and Parliament can not be allowed.

In a major boost to venture capital industry in the country, the Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi) on Tuesday launched a fund of funds with total corpus of Rs 12,000 crore to finance the startup firms.

India Aspiration Fund (AIF) is launched with Rs.

According to information MUDRA Bank has sanctioned Rs 20,000 crore fund amount and the government is planning to take it to Rs 1 trillion.

“Most of the venture money is coming into e-commerce sector, but not in sectors like manufacturing, biotech and solar which can solve India’s problems”.

“It is this mood of the country which will have to be gauged by policymakers and those who seem to be obstructionist in policies before they plan and conceive their future steps”, Jaitley said here at a function to launch a Fund of Funds for startups.

“We have just seen extremely disappointing but a very educative session of Parliament come to an end…It was disappointing because what we thought would happen in this session did not happen…It was educative because it enabled us to understand the entire politics of reform process in India”, he said. We also need a domestic system which can fund start-ups. “But at the same time it also provides you an opportunity”, he added.

“We need to strive for that”. “We will not allow under any circumstances redefining of the Constitution and Parliament of India”, senior party spokesman Anand Sharma told reporters.

Jaitley said there exists a gap between policy making and India’s potential and people are asking why the desired steps are not taken in the Parliament. Life Insurance Corp. of India (LIC) will be a partner and co-investor in the fund.