The Delhi cabinet, chaired by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, has approved setting up the Go-Delhi Foundation with a corpus of ₹50 crore, a significant new public investment in startup funding in India. The announcement came via a CMO statement on Sunday, sanctioning the fund to help young innovators turn ideas into products and take them to market.
One platform for Delhi's 21,000 DPIIT startups
Delhi is home to nearly 21,000 startups recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). The government has committed an initial budget outlay of ₹50 crore for the foundation, which will be established as a Section 8 not-for-profit company under the Companies Act, 2013, functioning under Delhi's Department of Industries.
The foundation will give startups and MSMEs access to product engineering, prototyping, laboratories and testing facilities, plus technical guidance, mentorship, incubation, business support and investor connections — all on one platform, cutting the scramble across scattered facilities. It will adopt a hub-and-spoke model, delivering programmes through existing facilities and partner institutions across Delhi.
Government as a first customer
Notably, government departments will be able to bring real-world challenges to Delhi's innovators through the foundation. Products and technologies developed for those challenges can be tested through pilot projects, with successful solutions taken forward for adoption — giving startups a credible path to government as a paying customer.
Why it matters for founders
Public infrastructure for startups is expanding beyond capital: prototyping labs, testing facilities and pilot pipelines reduce the cash burn of hardware and deep-tech founders. If you are building in Delhi, track the foundation's rollout — and its real-world-challenge pipeline, which could mean your first institutional buyer, not just a grant.