California’s banking regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10.

Mumbai:

Indian startups have about $1 billion deposited in the beleaguered Silicon Valley bank and the country’s deputy IT minister said he suggested that local banks step in and lend them more.

California’s banking regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10 after following up on the lender, which had $209 billion in assets at the end of 2022.

Depositors pulled out $42 billion in a single day, causing it to go bankrupt. The US government eventually stepped in to ensure that depositors had access to all of their funds.

“The point is, how do we transition to the Indian banking system in the coming months, instead of relying on the complex cross-border US banking system with all its uncertainties?” India’s Minister of State for Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in a Twitter space chat late on Thursday.

Mr. Chandrasekhar said that according to his estimates, hundreds of Indian startups had more than a billion dollars in funds in SVB.

Mr Chandrasekhar this week met over 460 stakeholders, including startups affected by the closure of SVB, and said he has given their suggestions to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Citing one of the suggestions made to the Finance Minister, Mr Chandrasekhar said that Indian banks could offer deposit-backed credit lines to startups holding funds in SVBs.

India is one of the world’s largest startup markets, with multi-billion dollar valuations in recent years and gaining the backing of foreign investors who have made bold bets on digital and other tech businesses.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)