New Delhi: Giving a boost to tech entrepreneurship, Finance Minister Nirmala Sithraman on Thursday announced setting up a corpus to Rs 1 lakh crore with 50-year interest-free loans to encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation in 'sunrise' domains.Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said the corpus will help start-ups in early stages and also help them engage with government bodies and private sector."No government in the past has actually made an announcement like this, which is heavily tilted towards innovation. This will have a number of socio-economic ramifications as well," Singh told PTI.Presenting the Interim Budget for 2024-25, Sitharaman said the coming years would be a golden era for the tech savvy youth of the country."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 tenures and low or nil interest rates," the finance minister said. "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," Sitharaman added. Singh said a corpus like the one announced by the finance minister will support start-ups in early stages. "This is going to be a great advantage in taking initiatives which at times seem constrained," the science and technology minister said. Singh lauded the announcement of the new scheme for strengthening deep-tech technologies for defence purposes and expediting 'atmanirbharta'.The minister said the new scheme would complement steps taken by the National Quantum Mission launched by the government last year with an outlay of Rs 6,033 crore to be spent over eight years.Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, termed the budget announcement as "fantastic."He said India already has a huge talent pool of researchers and innovators and this corpus would motivate them to become entrepreneurs."We commend the government's allocation of the Rs 1 lakh crore corpus in the interim budget 2024 for long-term financing of technological research. This move will be beneficial for startups in the rapidly expanding space sector, providing them with support to innovate and conduct further research across various domains of space technology," Lt Gen AK Bhatt, Director General, Indian Space AssociationBhatt said the new scheme being launched for boosting deep-tech for the defense sector will be transformative. "This initiative holds significant promise for DefSpace startups, which can play a substantial role in enhancing the ecosystem due to the integral relationship between space and defense industries," Bhatt said.