Bank of India launches three dedicated centres for startups

Bank of India on Monday launched three dedicated centres for startups and plans to have 12 such centres with a Rs 500 crore loan book by the first year of operations.

The three centres are located in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi. They are intended to facilitate the government's goal of promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, and comes under the initiative of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

Under DPIIT's initiative, more than 93,000 startups have been registered and are technically eligible for loans of Rs 1-10 crore.

The bank has already sanctioned almost Rs 12 crore to seven startups which are in the tech, restaurant and manufacturing space, its Managing Director Rajneesh Karnatak told PTI.

Further, Karnatak said the bank has already identified nine more cities with large pool of startup clusters and over the next 12 months, it will have 12 such dedicated centres.

The bank hopes to fund at least 200 such companies and have around Rs 500 crore of assets under management under this head, he noted.

These centres will offer all the necessary banking services to startups under one roof, serving as a hub for entrepreneurs in the startup ecosystem and providing end-to-end financial services.

They will also have a special startup desk with a relationship manager, he added.

Among others, he said that for all such loans, under the DPIIT initiative, borrowers will get one per cent discount on interest from the bank's present lending rate of 9.25 per cent.

If a borrower meets all the basic credit eligibility conditions, then the loan can be disbursed under 15 days, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)