The government is gearing up to unveil a new policy for promoting startups in January 2016 with an eye on boosting innovation, entrepreneurship and creating new jobs.
“We will come up with a full package of ideas and incentives for the Startup India initiative announced by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence day address to the nation,” said a senior government official working on the policy, adding that it is likely to be announced next month.
“The Startup India policy would be a set of significant measures to encourage entrepreneurship in the economy and we hope it would become a game-changer in making the ecosystem conducive for new ventures,” the official said.
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The policy, officials said, would bolster and complement the other initiatives already launched to promote new enterprises such as the Mudra scheme, short for Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency.
Over 70 lakh people have got loans under Mudra, amounting to Rs. 44,000 crore, as of last Friday, December 4.
“This indicates swift disbursals are underway. In his radio program ‘Mann Ki Baat on November 29, the Prime Minister had said that 66 lakh people had been granted loans amounting to Rs.42,000 crore,” the official pointed out.
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Separately, the Rs.2,000 crore fund of funds for venture capital investments has almost entirely drawn down its corpus, the official added. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had launched the India Aspiration Fund, set up under the Small Industries Development Bank of India or SIDBI, this August.
“Nearly 90 per cent of the venture capital in Indian startups is coming from overseas. We are trying to create a domestic VC industry and the Rs.2,000 crore allotted from this fund would enable seed funding for entrepreneurs and innovators,” the official said, adding that a fresh tranche of funds would be announced for the fund in financial year 2016-17.
“We need innovations that solve Indian consumers’ problems, with a grassroots-level movement. Foreign venture capital firms tend to have a bias towards replicating business models proven in developed countries,” he explained.
Mr. Modi had said on August 15 that the government is looking at systems for enabling startups. “We must be Number 1 in startups... ‘Startup India’ & ‘Stand up India,” the PM had said.