A total of 817 startups have enrolled for Karnataka’s Elevate 2023 programme aimed at backing startups with innovative ideas, said the state’s information technology minister Priyank Kharge.
“817 startups have enrolled for #ELEVATE2023, highlighting Karnataka’s status as the most favorable environment for innovation and entrepreneurship,” the minister wrote on X.
Elevate was started in 2015 by the Department of Electronics, IT, BT and S&T to identify the top innovative startups in Karnataka and offer them government support to scale up their offerings to enable them to elevate to the next level.
For the latest edition, the startups will be selected with help from several industry bodies including NASSCOM, TiE-Bangalore, Deshpande Foundation, India Electronics and Semiconductor Association, among others.
The Karnataka government has been putting efforts in support of the growth of the startup ecosystem in the state for some time now.
Last year, in November, Kharge said that the government has plans to launch a preferential public procurement policy to procure products and services from startups to boost the startup ecosystem in the state.
At the Big Tech Show by the state government, Kharge announced that under this policy, the Karnataka government itself could become the first customer, facilitating the procurement of products and services from startups with unique intellectual property.
Also, as a part of the sector-specific startup programmes, the government partnered with gaming unicorn Games24x7 to launch an online gaming accelerator initiative i.e. GameTech Accelerate, with the aim of offering mentorship to online gaming startups offering ‘innovative and viable’ solutions. Other than mentorship, the initiative will also connect the selected startups to investors to help them raise capital.
The efforts by the government come amid an ongoing funding winter in Bengaluru. According to Inc42’s Indian Tech Startup Funding Report 2023, startup funding in the city tanked 61% year-on-year (YoY) to $4.2 Bn, even lower than the $5.3 Bn funding raised by the city’s startups in 2018. The report further found that the number of deals also declined by almost 50% to 249 from 478 deals in 2022.
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