Over $200 billion dollars transferred to GIFT City Banks: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar recently stated that Indian startups have already mobilized more than 200 million dollars to banks located in GIFT City, a financial centre in Gujarat with relaxed compliance norms, in the aftermath of the US-based Silicon Valley Bank collapse earlier this week, according to reports.

“I have the data on my desk that shows over 200 million dollars has already been transferred to GIFT City banks,” the Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology,” said in the latter part of the day of March 16th.

Chandrasekhar also stressed that Indian banks and startups should figure out a way to jointly collaborate as India’s banking sector is among the healthiest in the world.

“I have made a case to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman that the Indian banking system can be a lot more startup friendly. There’s a need for the Indian banking system to consider startups as important target segments,” he stated.

“The silver lining in this dark cloud is that there is a newly found respect for the Indian banking system…We have branches in the US of public sector banks but do very little corporate banking for startups. If startups have in excess of 1 billion dollars in the Silicon Valley Bank, it can easily be (absorbed by) even SBI or Bank of Baroda there,” he said furthermore.

On March 14, Chandrasekhar convened for about an hour with the startup community in a novel kind of interaction to listen to their concerns and solutions suggested by startup initiators and venture capitalists.

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