Action COVID-19 Team to start 50 initiatives through grants to combat economic fallout due to Coronavirus

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has expressed happiness that the Start-up entrepreneurs are trying to find solutions to various problems linked to COVID-19. He welcomed the launch of Action COVID-19 Team (ACT), which is starting a Rs 100 crore programme, aimed to seed over 50 initiatives through grants to combat the economic fallout of COVID-19 in the country.

Mr Goyal yesterday held a meeting through Video Conference with the stakeholders of the start-up ecosystem, including developers, leading start-ups, Angel investors and others, to assess the impact of COVID-19 and lockdown in the country. The meeting was also attended by the Officers from the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, SEBI, CBDT, CBIC, NITI Aayog, and SIDBI.

During the meeting, the minister stressed on the important role that the start-ups are playing in the country as the harbingers of hope and for the future of the country. He said that the country is passing through an unprecedented crisis, and this requires prompt remedial actions. He sought everybody's cooperation in overcoming the hardships being faced by the industry, particularly the start-ups.

Action COVID-19 Team (ACT)

To make sure that the Indian start-ups survive during the coronavirus pandemic, several top fund managers, founders of leading start-ups, independent advisors, investors, supporters, and mentors have joined their hands and have announced the launch of Action COVID-19 Team (ACT), a Rs 100 crore programme. The programme aims at seeding over 50 initiatives through grants to combat the economic fallout of COVID-19 in India. The idea is to have capital-efficient and scalable solutions that need initial seed grant to fight COVID-19.

Additionally, the ACT platform will bring its networks, team money and start-up assets to create a force multiplier to help these initiatives make rapid meaningful progress.

The Action COVID Team (ACT) Grants, likely first-of-its-kind initiative in the world, has already received about 40% of its target corpus as some of the country's top entrepreneurs have joined the board not only to provide capital but also identify ventures that may be still at an ideation stage and to enable rapid evaluation and recommendations on potential projects.