Start Up India, Stand Up India

A startup is a business entity that is originated or headquartered in India, was opened less than five years ago and has an annual turnover of ₹ 25 crore.

Startup India is a campaign that was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on August 15, 2015 at the Red Fort. This is a an action plan that strives to boost the entrepreneurial spirit in Indians. It will ease out the process of doing business by doing away with the remains of the ‘licence raj’ and providing financial and banking assistance.  The Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana comes with refinance funds of ₹ 200 billions. It is targeted towards these micro units and their revival. Through this initiative the government also wants to target the marginalised communities like the SC/ST and women entrepreneurs.

The liberalising reforms of 1991, the tectonic shifts of globalisation, IT boom led to the increase in income levels of the Middle Class Indian. This actor is well educated, hard working and aware. He is rearing to go. He is the main protagonist for the Startup India campaign. The demographic dividend that India is currently witnessing leaves us with huge potential for growth. Our manufacturing sector is not equipped to cash on this opportunity and the workforce is not completely skilled to be pushed into the services sector. Therefore it is the middle and small enterprises (MSEs) that will pave a way to fetch dividends from this demographic shift. With the change in the social outlook, this campaign hopes to make the Indian middle class self reliant and expand its spending ability.

Startup India is spearheaded by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) in both rural and urban India. Below are the plans that the government has for startups:

1. Licensing and getting the permits is a huge hassle and in order to help with the ease of business, the startups can now adopt self certification for regulations and other liabilities. The laws covered under it pertain to: Payment of gratuity, Labour contract, Provident Fund management, Water and air pollution acts
2. The entire process shall be centralized with the help of a Startup India Hub. This will be a single point of contact for any information and assistance regarding financial aid.
3. A mobile App will be launched on April 14 that will allow the start-up founders to register their venture with the government of India.
4. The Intellectual Property Rights of the Startup foundations need to be protected. Therefore a Patent Protection fast track system will be instituted for low cost patent examination. This will promote awareness for the same. A panel of facilitators will provide legal support and assistance in submitting patent applications and other official documents. A rebate amount of 80% of the total value will be given to the entrepreneurs who are filling in the patent applications.
5. A total of ₹ 10,000 crore are funded for the assistance with an initial corpus of ₹ 2,500 crore. This shall support the venture for four years. The Life Insurance Corporation of India will help develop this fund.
6. National Credit Guarantee Trust Company (NCGTC) with the budget of ₹ 500 crore will be conceptualised and implemented. It will control the flow of funds for the startup ventures.
7. Currently the investments by venture capitalists are exempt from the Capital Gains Tax. This policy will be also implemented for first stage or primary level investment in startups.
8. In order to speed up the growth of startups, they are not mandated to pay Income tax for three years.
9. There will be an Annual Incubator Grand Challenge that will give growth to innovation related study across school in India.
10. The Atal Innovation Mission will be launched to boost innovation amongst the youth of this country.
11. 35 new incubators and 31 innovation centres will be set up in national institutes across India. They will be based on a private-public partnership mode.
12. ₹ 100 crores have been invested in setting up of seven Research Parks in Institutes of National importance. Six research parks will be set up across the Indian Institute of Technology campuses and one in India Institute of Science campus.

Below are some of the successful Start-ups in India

• Housing.com by Rahul Yadav
• YourStory by Shraddha Sharma
• Paytm by Vijay Shekhar Sharma
• Snapdeal by Kunal Bahl
• Flipkart by Sachin & Binny Bansal
• Oyo Rooms by Ritesh Aggarwal
• Chayyos by Nitin Saluja nd Raghav Verma
• Micromax by Rahul Sharma
• Zomato by Deepinder Goyal
• Box8 by Amit Raj and Anshul Gupta
• Freecharge by Kunal Shah, Sandeep Tandon
• Redbus by Charan Padmaraju, Phanindra Sama, Sudhakar Pasupunuri
• Ola by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhat
• TinyOwl by Bhavish Aggarwal
• BookMyShow by Ashish Hemrajani, Parikshit Dar and Rajesh Balpande
• CashKaro by Rohan Bhargava, Swati Bhargava