Thiruvananthapuram:The Kerala government on Wednesday decided to raise a government-sponsored Venture Capital Fund with Rs 250 crore as corpus for the growth of startups in the southern state.

The decision was taken at the state Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The cabinet also earmarked an amount of Rs 1 crore for the initial expenditure, a CMO release said here.

It said the funds will be mobilised through a jointly sponsored trust of Kerala State Financial Enterprises such as KFC, KSFE, KSIDC or any other financial institution owned/controlled by the Kerala government.

Earlier, the proposal for setting up the venture capital was made in the state budget presented by Finance Minister K N Balagopal in March this year.

Considering Kerala's inherent strength in diverse sectors, the state government, in its 2022 budget, had proposed to raise a Venture Capital Fund in Green Shoe for startups with a limit of Rs 250 crore.

The cabinet also decided to take steps to facilitate the operations of the newly established Kerala Paper Products Limited (KPPL) in Vellore in Kottayam district.

As part of this, the Cabinet has decided to allot 24,000 MT of forest based raw materials for paper pulp production from the plantations under the Forest Department in Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur districts.

A committee headed by the Chief Secretary was tasked to give directions on the rates for this, the release said.

The KPPL is the renamed version of the Hindustan Newsprint Limited (HNL), a central PSU, acquired by the state government. PTI