New Delhi, Feb 1 (IANS): The Rs 1 lakh crore corpus to provide long-term, interest-free financing for the youth in the technology sector is a positive measure as access to capital is a critical factor to support innovation and growth in sunrise industries like manufacturing, industry leaders said on Thursday.

Presenting the Interim Budget in the Lok Sabha, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that this corpus will provide "long-term low or nil interest rates so that the youth can innovate at scale".

“For our tech-savvy youth, this will be a golden era. A corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore will be established with a 50-year interest free loan. The corpus will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates,” said the finance minister.

This will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains. “We need to have programmes that combine the powers of our youth and technology,” she said.

Lt Gen Dr SP Kochhar, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said that the long-term, interest-free or low interest rate loans and focus on deep tech will “further encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation”.

Ankur Bansal, Co-Founder and Director, BlackSoil Capital, said the move will encourage entrepreneurship. “In addition, such initiatives will attract investment from the private sector and foreign investors, driving growth and propelling India towards self-reliance,” said Bansal.

According to the government, the priority is to provide ample training and empower the Indian MSMEs to compete globally and to meet their needs.

The finance minister said that a new scheme will be launched to strengthen the deep-tech sector for defence purposes.

Peeyush Vaish, Partner and TMT Industry Leader, Deloitte India, said that the large interest free outlay will further boost our tech start-up ecosystem in emerging areas around 5G, generative AI, Agritech and health tech.

“The Rs 1 lakh crore corpus that will be made available with 50-year interest-free (long-term financing or refinancing) to encourage the private sector to scale up R&D in Sunrise domain is a welcome move for the sector. This will push India to be on the forefront of innovation and skill enhancement,” said Vaish.

Neeraj Bansal, Co-Head and COO, India Global, KPMG in India, said the corpus will help in improving India’s research and innovation ecosystem, critical to the country’s aspirations of being an $5 trillion economy.