FM Nirmala Sitharaman said the Opposition is habituated to spreading lies and they wrongly claim that there has been a “waiver” of loans given to industrialists.
A report by GlobalData, a data and analytics company, said that a total of 375 venture capital funding deals were announced in the first four months of 2024. The disclosed value of these deals stood at USD 3.1 billion, the report asserted.
This was a year-on-year growth of 1.1 per cent and 13.8 per cent in terms of deal volume and value, respectively, according to GlobalData.
India accounted for 6.9 per cent of the total number of venture capital funding deals announced globally during January-April 2024 while its share in terms of value stood at 4.1 per cent.
As per the report from the analytics company, some of the notable funding deals in India during January-April 2024 included USD 300 million worth of funding raised by Meesho, USD 216 million in capital raised by PharmEasy, USD 103 million funding raised by Pocket FM, and USD 100 million capital secured by Shadowfax.
FM Nirmala Sitharaman Slams UPA Over Startup Funding
The bad loans crisis during the Congress-led UPA tenure stifled the credit requirements and dreams of crores of aspirational Indians who wanted to establish start-ups and expand small businesses, alleged Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Nirmala Sitharaman.
In a long thread of posts on her X timeline, she launched an attack on the Congress party and its allies, alleging that the UPA government chose to favour dynasts and cronies while leaving a large chunk of Indians in the lurch.
“When the Modi government took charge, these cronies fled, fearing prosecution,” she wrote in her four-part X post, in an apparent reference to fugitives that have flown out of the country since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power.
Further, targeting her party BJP’s principal Opposition party Congress, Sitharaman said those who take credit for the nationalization of banks kept the nation’s poor and middle class unbanked for decades “while their leaders and allies climbed the ladders of corruption.”
GlobalData On USD 3 Billion Funds Raised By Startups
Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, said: “When several of its peer countries were witnessing a fall in either VC deals volume or value, and some countries were also experiencing a decline in both, India emerged as a notable exception to register improvement in terms of volume as well as value.”
Bose said India apart from being a key Asia Pacific country, standing just next to China in venture capital funding activity, is also among the top five markets globally.
The data and information mentioned in the report were sourced from proprietary databases, primary and secondary research, and in-house analysis conducted by GlobalData’s team.
(With Inputs From ANI)