After opening India's first exclusive bank branch for startups in Bengaluru the State Bank of India(SBI) will look at opening similar branches in other startup hubs such as Gurugram and Hyderabad in the next six months. This was revealed by SBI Chairman Dinesh Khara in Bengaluru. Khara said that they have already funded around 104 startups across the country through the debt route and it would be cumulatively around Rs 250 crores so far. He also said that he had seen responsible borrowing from the startups.
The Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) has also entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the SBI to boost the prevailing startup ecosystem for the state of Karnataka. Subsequently, the SBI will also explore and open startup branches across three clusters (Mysore, Mangalore, and Hubblli-Belagavi) to facilitate and support startups based out of these clusters.
“We had done a potential business study before opening this startup branch in the startup capital of India—Bengaluru. We are in a position to provide end-to-end services to the startups which will further enhance the startup potential in the city. We have also been closely observing the needs of startups,” said Khara.
The SBI's exclusive startup branch at Koramangala in Bengaluru will provide services such as loans, deposits, transaction banking, outward and inward remittances, payments, cash management product, forex, insurance, custodial services, capital market and legal advisory, structuring, demat and trading. SBI’s start-up branch would also act as a hub for various stakeholders assisting in providing solutions acting as spokes and supporting the hub branch in enabling startups to avail end-to end financial and advisory services through the branch. This hub is also expected to leverage the large presence of the bank in the market by bringing synergy among all entities and various departments of the state bank to offer one-stop solution to these corporates and startups starting from the formation of the entity till IPOs and FPOs of the companies.
The start up branch will also serve as the vital go-to-place for meeting any business need emanating from the startup ecosystem. Besides the banking services, the branch would also have specialist teams for capital markets assisting in equity raise and registration facilities. The branch will also house specialist officers for the forex, treasury solutions, wealth management and credit needs of the start-ups. The bank’s subsidiaries like mutual funds and custodial services would also be partnering in the initiative. Besides the startups, the branch would also be catering to all the requirements of the PE, VC funds and the AIFs (Alternative Investment Funds).
As per the recent Global Startup Ecosystem Index (GSEI) by Israel-based StartupBlink, Bengaluru is the “strongest startup ecosystem in India” and 8th globally. It has ranked Bengaluru along with the likes of San Francisco, London, New York, Boston, Beijing, Shanghai and Tel Aviv. In this year’s GSEI rankings, among Indian cities, Bengaluru was at number 1. Globally, New Delhi ranked 13, Mumbai 17, Pune 90, and Hyderabad 97 respectively. Karnataka also has a balanced ecosystem of IT and ITES, Electronics, Biotechnology and Innovation. These sectors complement each other and the startup ecosystem has more than 13,000 startups and 58 incubation centres across the state.
