Saturday, 16 January 2016

Indian businesses welcome Modi's 'Startup India'

Narendra Modi finally kicked off the Startup India program in an attempt to start a culture of innovation. The program is aimed at reducing hurdles for starting a business and taking it further. The Data Driver received a number of views and reactions from the industry on the new program.

Dinesh Goel, Co-Founder & CEO, AasaanJobs said, "The salient points of the Startup India initiative announced by PM Narendra Modi - tax exemption for incubators and startups, IPR protection, patent fee reduction, setting up of research parks across IITs and IISC and a corpus of Rs. 10,000 crore to be utilised for startups - all look quite promising in terms of attracting the best talent from far and wide to help India reach its potential. Other measures such as the exemption from capital gains tax when investing one's own wealth in a startup will ensure that many jobs are created in every level and human resource and talent acquisition will no longer be a bottleneck. Apart from this, no inspection for the first 3 years and self-certification for statutory compliance will enable startups to hire in bulk and scale up their operations, creating a cascading effect as far as job creation is concerned."

Shaifali Agarwal Holani,Founder & CEO,EasyFix said, "What an initiative and a great day for India. Most populated India has sharpest brains of all times and this initiative will give a platform to many enthusiastic but under confident talents to come out of their ordeal. Encouraging privatisation will speed the pace at which India is developing and we will become a developed country soon. For us, EasyFix is a labour development & construction focussed company, Mr. Modi said "he is trying to foster innovation and incubation" and our startup is looking forward to collaborating with Modi Govt for skill development and labour development initiatives. We want to be able to contribute to the society & transform the unorganised labour market by doing things right, and that is by better execution of skill development programs."

Radhika Aggarwal, Co-founder & CBO, Shopclues welcomed the move saying, "The government has acted like a disruptive start up. The policies around cleaning the license raj will be a huge booster for Startup community while both setting up and dissolving a company. Other initiatives such as tax benefits, easy IPR regulations, and government academia will go a long way in making India’s start up ecosystem super successful."

Akshay Verma, Co-founder & Director, Fitpass, said, "Startup India has provided strong encouragement and respectability to first generation entrepreneurs apart from smoothening processes. If the promises made are fulfilled timely, there is no doubt that India will be the global hotspot for job creators and problem solvers."