StartUp India Action Plan Unveiled

Date: January 20, 2016

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“Success occurs when right preparation meets right opportunity.”

Opening the floodgates of opportunities for the entrepreneurs in the country, Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi unveiled the much awaited ‘StartUp India’ Action Plan. The groundbreaking initiatives and policies to infuse more energy into India’s StartUp ecosystem were received with thunderous applause and cheering from the who’s who of the first generation entrepreneurs assembled at the Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi.
Grounded in the maxim of ‘minimum government and maximum governance’, the action plan envisages to spread the StartUp movement across the country and involve sectors, IT and beyond.

The noteworthy game-changing policies enumerated in the Action Plan are:

1. A corpus-fund of Rs. 10,000 crore for four years
The fund will be the Fund of Funds as it will not invest directly into Startups, but will participate in the capital of SEBI registered Venture Funds.
It will be managed by a board with private professionals drawn from industry bodies, academia and successful startups.

2. A single platform for registration and information exchange
A mobile app and a portal shall be created with back end integration with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Registrar of Firms for seamless information exchange and processing of the registration application to enable start up registration in a day.

3. A simplified compliance regime of self-certification
Reducing the regulatory burden for startups, compliance on nine labour and environment laws will be done on the basis of self-certification. Moreover, moratorium on inspections incase of the labour laws has also been announced for a period of three years.

4. Legal support and IPRs protection
Launched on a pilot-basis, the action plan provides for a panel of facilitators to help understand the intricacies of patent laws, fast track the patent application process and provides 80% rebate in patent fees.

5. Tax exemptions
To augment the funds availability, the profits will be exempted from income-tax for a period of three years and capital gains invested in SEBI registered venture funds will be exempt from tax as well.

6. Startup India Hub
As a single point contact for knowledge exchange and access to funds, the Startup India Hub will help to facilitate collaboration between Central & State governments, Indian and foreign VCs, angel networks, banks, incubators, legal partners, consultants, universities and R&D institutions. Also, it will organize mentorship programs and thus will act as their guide, friend and mentor.

7. Relaxed public procurement norms
Startups in the manufacturing sector adhering to the requisite quality standards will be exempted from the criteria of “prior experience/ turnover”.

8. Easy exit policy
To ensure voluntary and fast track business closure, the action plan provides for a 90 day window. The government has already provided for such a provision in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Bill 2015 (“IBB”), tabled in the Lok Sabha in December 2015.

9. Atal Innovation Mission to boost entrepreneurship and innovation
Sector specific incubators and 500 tinkering Labs shall be established in collaboration with academic institutions. Moreover, State Innovation Councils shall be supported for awareness creation. The Grand Innovation Challenge Awards is also envisaged to incentivize innovation.

10. Students specific Innovation programs
To spur the out-of-the-box thinking amongst the young minds, the ‘Innovation Core’ programme shall be initiated to reach to 10 lakh innovations from 5 lakh schools and the best 100 will be showcased at the Annual Festival of Innovations in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. A Grand Challenge program, ‘NIDHI’ (National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovations) shall be instituted through Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centres (IEDCs) to support and award INR 10 lakhs to 20 student innovations from IEDCs. Also, ‘Uchhattar Avishkar Yojana’, a joint MHRD-DST scheme has been earmarked INR 250 crore per annum to foster “very high quality” research amongst IIT students.

Image Source: Twitter

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Ratisha is a sincere and vivacious person who has always preferred to take the road less travelled. She found her passion and calling in writing. She has worked in the past with a Panchkula-based promising IT company, where she was the Content Development Director. She oversaw the birth and development of e-commerce portals, indiabuye.com and silvershoppee.com. Voicing her thoughts and unfurling her creative wings gained her many accolades. Since then she has been contributing through writing at various portals. She presently writes for www.writerati.in and www.blog.pardesilink.com, where her vibrant and positive writings touch upon subjects of human concern. Ratisha is her clumsiest best either in an apron and paint brush in hand or peering from her geeky spectacles into a non-fiction, when not wielding the pen.