Overview
- Karnataka set a five-year target to enable 25,000 startups under the new policy, including at least 10,000 from clusters outside Bengaluru, backed by a Rs 570.675 crore allocation.
- The state launched a Rs 75 crore Beyond Bengaluru Cluster Seed Fund with a Rs 20 crore government commitment to start, initially focusing on Mysuru, Mangaluru, and Hubballi–Dharwad.
- The cluster fund will make equity or equity-linked investments starting around Rs 50 lakh per startup in areas such as IT, electronics and semiconductors, biotechnology, and AVGC.
- A Rs 150 crore ELEVATE NxT deeptech grant programme will offer up to Rs 1 crore per startup for work in AI, robotics, biotech, quantum technologies, and green energy, open to startups across India.
- At a felicitation event, 146 startups received Rs 38.85 crore under ELEVATE 2025, with 43% women-led and 43% based beyond Bengaluru, as the programme’s lifetime disbursals reached Rs 287.85 crore to 1,230 startups.