Start Up - Stand Up India Scheme

Start-up India, Standup India campaign was launched to bypass the existing complex procedure of registration, excessive regulations, red tapism, funding problems, problems of land, etc.It was launched to promote entrepreneurial culture and nurture the growth of start-ups in India with a special focus on weaker sections including women, SCs and ST.

The following achievements have been made:

1. Public-academia partnerships: Recently progress has been seen in providing incubators from Public-academia partnerships who would provide expert guide to new startup in their fields.
2. Single window of clearance: Government has recently made provisions of self-certification provisions where one can register his company from one source with minimal external help.
3. Increasing tax holidays: Has incentivized many new startup to come up as more time would be given to make their startup big.

However It has seen partial success because of the following reasons :

1. Inadequate money from Venture capitals: Small industries development banks of India (SIDBI) was supposed to invest 10,000 crore rupees of money in Venture Capital Fund. However, this money has not been withdrawn to invest in start-ups as bank only puts 15% of money and 85% of money comes from the Venture capitals which have not been able to manage such kind of money.
2. Registration with SEBI: Government’s requirement to register all the Venture Capitals(VC) with SEBI to invest in startup when many big VC are not registered hence, they were kept out.
3. Redundant tax holidays: Most startups don’t make profit in their initial years and their tax holiday years goes to waste without making enough profits in them.
4. Rationalisation of government supports: Government focus excessively on providing supports to startups in terms of tax benefits, and other allied support rather than focusing more on enabling business environment. Therefore, most startups have no incentive to grow and become big.

On the whole, these processes would take time to mature but government has to rationalize its support to make the environment more competing which would not only help nascent startups but the existing ones which struggle to become big.The other caveats like AIM, Biotech Fund, NIDHI (PRAYAS), Ucchatar Avishkar Yojana would become highly beneficial if implemented in right spirit. The scheme appears ‘grandeur’ in-principle but currently looks somewhat ‘dull’ in implementation.

By: Harman Sandhu