Through this landmark programme, Modi is willing to create India as the international hub of entrepreneurship, an initiative to empower businesses and giving them freedom from the government.
Rohan Bhargava, Co-Founder, CashKaro, believes that the announcement of this plan is a very encouraging start. The direction of the plan shows that the Government understands the challenges of a start-up.
“This is shown in the fact that they have addressed taxation, recognised the need for mentorship through the Start-up India hub and created mechanisms for providing funding. Increased access to funding was a key expectation from this Plan and the Rs 10,000 Fund of Funds corpus is likely to be a huge support for start-ups,” commented Bhargava.
A host of incentives unveiled by him for start-ups also included self-certification and a three-year exemption from inspections, an online portal and mobile app, an 80-percent cut in the patent application fee and a single-point hub for hand-holding.
According to Sudhir Singh, Partner – PwC India, the announcements by the Government will encourage further entrepreneurship within the country. Tax holiday, patent, ease of closing companies, investment fund, gateway for public procurement are measures that will definitely make it easier for companies to do business.
“We look forward to further details around these. The key will be how these are implemented. However, these measures alone will not help spurt Government’s ambition of having 300,000 start-ups,” expressed Singh.
The Prime Minister’s announcement of the Start-up Policy had quite a few important and measurable benefits that the start-ups can gain from.
Speaking on the launch, Himanshu Meena – Founder, Parsel, said, “The most refreshing aspect was PM’s pointed emphasis on minimum government intervention and promise to ease bankruptcy laws. These indicate the government’s willingness to provide space to entrepreneurs for experimentation, without worrying too much about archaic legalities.”
At an event at Vigyan Bhavan conference complex here to launch the “Start-Up India Action Plan”, the prime minister also announced a Rs.10,000-crore fund for new enterprises, equal opportunity in government procurement, a Rs.500-crore credit guarantee scheme and easier exit norms.
“While the entire summit was aimed at promoting start-ups, our expectations were limited to motivating the youngsters in taking initiatives for doing something they believe in. However, we truly feel that this summit has been worthwhile after listening to the announcements made by the PM. Policies like No Capital gain, No Taxes for 3 years and most importantly the Start-up Fest will allow us to build a healthy collaborative environment with an aim to grow in this competitive world”, opined Anurav Rane, CEO, PlanMyMedicalTrip.
The list of incentives also included 35 new incubators under the public-private partnership mode, 31 new innovation centres at national institutes, seven new research parks, five bio-clusters and a mission with sector-specific incubators, labs, pre-incubation training and seed money.
Commenting on the scheme, Uday Reddy, Founder & CEO, YuppTV, said, “The start-up landscape in India is growing significantly and certainly has a promising future. We are elated with the recent announcement by our honourable PM towards the Start-up India Stand Up initiative. It will definitely create a healthy start-up ecosystem in the country and empower the Indian youth for a better economy.”
Modi also mentioned that his government intended to club all related legislation involving start-ups and took a dig at the opposition in this regard. According to Modi, the difference that people will find today with governance in India was that on a Saturday, when it is an official day off, with no question of any activity after 6 p.m., such a grand event as today’s was taking place.
“This is the most serious bid to boost the entrepreneurial wave in the country and lead us to enviable levels of growth. Anyone looking for reason to start-up? Now is the time to take the plunge”, commented Sanjay Lakhotia, Founder & Director, Fitastik.
Modi also expressed that he wanted the youth today to transform themselves from job seekers to job givers. Businesses across the nation have welcomed this initiative with much positive sentiment. Many believe that it will help boost young entrepreneurs and catapult the growth of Indian economy.
According to Rahul Jalan, Director, IndiaOnline, Start Up India, Stand Up India initiative will simplify the things and doing business in India will be easier than ever. “Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has promised that he is going to announce a friendly tax regime in the Union Budget next month, which is really a big relief for the corporate sector”, commented Jalan.
Funding and financing for the start-ups is the key area where most of the young entrepreneurs are anticipating disruptive changes.
For Innefu Labs’ Co-Founder, Tarun Wig, it is a thriving initiative that will propel greater innovation and technology adoption, he said, “Liberal and friendly economic policies pertaining to taxes, registration and foreign investment proposals will help businesses a lot to perform and sustain both in domestic and international market.”
A study by Aspiring Minds revealed that as much as 47 per cent entry level hiring in start-ups today is comprised of non – technical roles.
Himanshu Aggarwal, CEO & Founder, Aspiring Minds, believes that start-ups will be the mainstay for the job growth for the next few years. “The start-up jobs vary form specialized technical roles to a large number of non-technical roles. We expect start-ups to create a north of 1, 00, 000 jobs this years with 80 per cent of non-technical roles benefiting large masses of youth in the country. The start-up India initiative has the capability to propel this further by helping ease setup and funding norms,” commented Aggarwal.
On the other hand, many players in the mobile handset category are expecting that this initiative, will help to resolve many on-going problems of the industry such as a delayed quality certification process by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).
Speaking on the initiative, Govind Bansal, Co-Founder, Aqua, said, “Due to a slow procedure consumers are deprived of good options and businesses are unable to meet the market demand with the right product at a right time. As Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has ensured that It is a final break from the conventional Licence Raj of India, we expect that things will be easier and simpler in future.”
Sharing his thoughts on the initiative, Sanjay Krishna Goyal, CEO & Founder ACL Mobile, said, “The new initiative focusing on start-ups is a welcome move. The government needs to create a favourable environment for small-ticket co-investments which can help early-stage entrepreneurs; consider matching investments for seed investments by central funding agencies. The government initiatives should focus on building a start-up culture in the country by promoting all round entrepreneurial development and subsequently creating an eco-system for conducive growth of the start-ups.”
India is up for a start-up revolution; with 3100 start-ups in 2014 the reports project the numbers to reach 11,500 by 2020. Tapping into this entrepreneurial gold mine gives form to innovation that can boost India’s economic prospects by creating jobs and wealth.
However, the last decade has seen a boost in entrepreneurial activity because of significant amount of funding activities. But obstacles such as costs, procedural complexities and delays still remain at large.
According to Manish Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO, GREX, Prime Minister and the Finance Minister outlined a change in the principle approach of the government towards the economy – that the government wants to stay away from deciding and directing on what needs to be done.
Expressing his thoughts about the plan, Kumar said, “The Government looks at a policy of arm’s length enablement. This stand is a bold new change in the government policy and disruptive in its own right.Venture debt was miserably missing in the ecosystem. Startups have only been used to equity as a mode of capital.
On the other side, Pramod Saxena, Chairman, Oxigen Services, believes that, the private equity generally rushes in one direction but for the country’s perspective this should be seen differently. The government initiative should be to promote all round entrepreneurial development in support to start-up ventures that comes from different diversified fields which is huge in numbers; especially when we talk about agriculture, food and clean energy.
“The start-up India movement is set to boost country’s entrepreneurial spirit. Over the last 8 to 10 years many initiatives have come forward to uplift the start-up culture but with PM Modi’s encouragement, it is a matter of time where we’d be as impactful as Silicon Valley and others. We are in need of private enterprise of that scale that can promote these initiates like Silicon Valley. In the payment sector we have seen a lot of development and government support. There are lot of other sectors which are open and need entrepreneurial and equity support”, commented Saxena.
A change in tax regulation can boost further investments into the start-up segment. India being a country of youths, needs a change, this can certainly be the best change one can see. Such campaign suits Indian conditions and will assist at all levels.
Rohit Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, Koenig Solutions, said, “This campaign can surely boost entrepreneurship and job creation. The initiative will lead towards new businesses or innovative projects and it will directly prove much helpful in improving the economic growth of the country and career growth of the youths.”
