ONGC has launched a Rs 100 crore start-up fund on its 60th year anniversary, the company said in a press release on Sunday. 

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The fund, called ONGC start-up is in line with the government's initiative to boost entrepreneurship in the country under the 'Start-up India' banner, the company said in a release. 

It said, the company will provide "the entire support chain for start-ups including seed capital, hand-holding, mentoring, market linkage and follow-ups."

The fund will be for start-ups with "fresh ideas in the oil and gas sector." ONGC is expected to launch a dedicated website for its start-up fund soon. 

The oil & gas major also gave a full page advertisement announcement in Mid-Day.

A full-page advertisement about the new start-up fund in Mid-Day newspaper.

On the occasion, ONGC CMD Dinesh K Sarraf, said, "this initiative will promote entrepreneurship among the young Indians by creating an ecosystem that is conducive for growth of start-ups in the oil and gas sector, which has a huge potential for technology-enabled ideas. 

Sarraf was speaking at an event in Dehradun.

"The Oil & Gas sector is contributing enormously to the growth of economy. Currently, the sector faces various critical challenges and new ideas are required to mitigate those challenges," he added. 

Earlier this year in March, Oil and Gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan told the Natural Gas Vision 2025 conference organised by the Indian Oil Corp in New Delhi, that start-run oil companies will set up a fund to finance start-ups soon, a Mint report had said.

“Indian intellectual capacity is contributing immensely to the global oil and gas economy. We would like the Indian energy market too to benefit from that capacity,” Pradhan said, adding that state-run exploration, production, refining and gas infrastructure companies will contribute to the fund. 

Back then, the government had asked oil and gas companies to form a corpus to invest in new and innovative business models in the sector.