Start Up India’s launch and latest updates
“Start Up India, Stand Up India”, which was launched by PM Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi recently, lived up to its promise recently, with a slew of initiatives being announced to boost startups.
Measures announced for startups at Start Up India
Among these was a 3-year tax holiday, an inspector raj-free regime and capital gains tax exemption for 3 years. This will be music to the ears of entrepreneurs, since cutting through tedious red tape has always been one of their foremost demands. While a significant step in this direction was taken in 1991, a lot more needed to be done, and startup founders are hopeful that the steps unveiled at the Start Up India programme will finally kill of the licence-permit raj.
Furthermore, the Modi government announced a Rs. 10,000 crore corpus for startups. This will assure funding for startups, particularly in the early stages, when entrepreneurs are heavily reliant on bootstrapping and angel investors. With investors demanding more assurances from entrepreneurs, the need for guaranteed, institutional funding has never been higher. Moreover, 9 labour and environmental laws which were previously considered to be symptomatic of the red-tape culture now have a self-certification scheme attached with them. There will be no scrutiny of entrepreneurial ventures within the first 3 years of the launch of the venture. The Modi government is also conceptualizing the creation of a liberalized patent regime to help start-up businesses register patents. Patenting fee will be cut by 80 percent.
In particular, the Start Up India programme will be targeting those ventures which emphasize innovation, employment generation and wealth creation. Profits earned by startups are also likely to get income tax exemption for the first 3 years of business. The 19-point plan for startups, with its provisions for CGT exemptions will put startups at par with MSME’s.
The bottom line
The overall aim of the Start Up India programme is to create an entrepreneurship-friendly ecosystem in India, and the announcements made are likely to fulfill the promise which the venture had previously been associated with.
The official Government announcement can be found here.
