The total employment in the manufacturing sector increased from 57 million in the year 2017-18 to 62.4 million in the year 2019-20. This was stated by Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Som Prakash in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.<br />''<br />''He said, as per the Economic Survey 2021-22, in spite of covid-related disruptions, there is a trend of positive overall growth of gross value addition in the manufacturing sector.<br />''<br />''<span style="color: #222222;">On startups, the Minister said, the government has established a Fund of Funds for Startups initiatives with a corpus of 10 thousand crore rupees to meet the funding needs of the startups.</span><br />