Big leap forward? PM Modi to unveil action plan for startups on Saturday

For the first time in India, the government is paying attention and giving the much-deserved recognition to the start-up sector. Prime minister Narendra Modi will unveil ‘Start Up India, Stand Up India’ on 16 January. The challenge for the government is to ensure that the start-ups do not have to go through any of the government procedures and regulations. “We are pushing for that for a particular number of years or till they achieve a particular turnover. These start-ups do not have to go to the very complicated process of company registration or labour registration or going through income tax processes and they keep away from the government and that is something which we are trying to evolve,” said Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. [caption id=“attachment_2580768” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  ThinkStock[/caption]As part of the initiative, the government on January 16 is holding a day-long session on startups in which around 2,000 new age ventures, 40 CEOs, and venture capitalists would participate. The event will feature interactive talks with global leaders such as founder and CEO of SoftBank Masayoshi Son; founder of WeWork Adam Nuemann; and Uber founder Travis Kalanick, said a PTI report. Google will be conducting an innovative session titled ‘Laucnhpad Accelerator’ which will involve live pitches being made by early state startups to potential investors. Whosoever gets into the accelerator will get $50,000 from Google as equity funding into their startups. A question and answer session titled ‘Face-to-face with Policy makers’ is also being organized wherein secretaries of key departments will answer questions on how the government will be creating an enabling ecosystem for startups. The prime minister will also unveil an action plan for startups, which would help the sector penetrate tier-2 and tier-3 cities in sectors such as manufacturing and healthcare. The start-up industry has also made a strong pitch for a comprehensive plan from the government to lift the industry to the next level of growth, by resolving the bottlenecks on funding, easing up the doing business and changing regulations, top industry leaders have said. The government initiative comes at an opportune time. In 2014, start-ups employed over 65,000 people and this number is expected to rise to 250,000 in 2020. According to the Nasscom Startup Report 2015, India is among the five largest startup communities in the world with the number of start-ups crossing 4,200, registering a growth of 40 percent, by the end of 2015. At Firstpost, we are running a series of articles by experts in the industry on their outlook for the sector; the challenges of the ecosystem; and what they expect from the government’s maiden initiative from the policy initiative on Start Up India, Stand Up India on January 16. We start the series today with N D Shashank, Founder and CEO, Practo.