Start-up mania in INDIA

Start-up mania in INDIA

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday kick-started Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious Start-Up India mission at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi. The Start up India mission to be unveiled on Saturday envisages technology business incubators and research parks. Prime Minister Modi announced a string of initiatives and activities to strengthen and support the country’s start-up. India is home to third-largest number of technology start-ups after the US and Britain, and they attract billions of dollars in funding every year, amidst the strict and paralyzing government regulations and red tape.

India is in top gear with 4,200 startups, India ranks 3rd globally. Of $18 billion pumped into Indian startups between 2010-15, $9 billion came in 2015 alone.9 Indian startups have been valued at more than a billion dollars. Increase in number of incubators: 80 in 2014, 110 in 2015; 50% outside Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai.

The PM’s action plan consists of:-

*No tax on profits, inspection for 3 years
*Credit Guarantee Scheme
*No capital gains if money is invested in another start-up
*Easy exit policy
*Fund with Rs.10,000 crore corpus
*Special scheme for women entrepreneurs
*Mobile app, portal for registrations
*Encouragement to incubation centres and support to biotechnology start-ups
*Self-certification based compliance for labour and environment laws
*Single-point start-up India hub for clearances

However, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday that start-ups and intolerance cannot exist together. Everyone’s hoping that this would be the ultimate break from the so called License Raj of shackles on business.