Union minister of state for talent improvement and entrepreneurship and electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Tuesday interacted with over 450 startups, owned/co-owned by Indians, Venture Capitalists (VCs), Industry leaders and others stakeholders on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank by means of video conferencing. He assured that the federal government is laser-focused on serving to them tide over this disaster.
This session was a part of the federal government’s strategy to deal with the state of affairs and provide any help to members of India’s innovation and startup ecosystem who had monetary holdings in SVB.
The minister mentioned the Indian banking system was strong and advised that they may discover utilizing it.
“Indian banking system is most stable and robust and you must explore it as part of your organisational framework. While startups have a natural incentive to use banks like SVB, we must figure out a way to use the Indian banking system without changing your business model,” he mentioned.
Startups like Zoth.Io, Hatica.Io and VCs and monetary service suppliers like Blume VC and Mirae Asset have been a part of the meet.
Though startups and enterprise capitalists mentioned that the US authorities authorities have assured of returning full cash to the depositors, there isn’t a readability on the timelines, which is able to result in a liquidity crunch within the companies which have been impacted by the SVB collapse, in line with the minister.
Most of the Indian software-as-a-services startups with a presence within the US and companies linked to incubator Y Combinator are amongst these entities who’re feeling the warmth of the SVB collapse.
Some of the considerations that have been shared by the attendees included switch of their US Dollar deposits to India and to US-based branches of Indian banks, amongst different points.
The minister assured them the federal government would do the whole lot doable to navigate the storm attributable to the financial institution collapse.
“We will share a list of suggestions with 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 United States,” Chandrasekhar added.
The minister also said that for those startups whose deposits were going to be made whole, but have no access to it currently.
“We will explore the option of whether 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 US, can be made available to you and make it easier for them to move from SVB to any other Indian Bank in the US.”
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