India, Feb. 1 -- The Startup India Fund of Funds (FoF) must be commended on galvanizing 9 times its initial corpus as capital available for investments in Indian startups. The FoF acted as a nucleus around which rupee capital poured into startups and helped reduce the Indian startup ecosystem's dependency on foreign capital. The boldness of the decision in 2016 for such a model has helped seed many of today's unicorns and startups looking to IPO.

The renewal of this FoF by an additional INR 10,000 Cr will see an increased focus on women entrepreneurs. This shows the government's commitment to increasing women participation in the economy. The Economic Survey noted that close to half of all DPIIT registered startups have at least one woma...