Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Focus on Entrepreneurship: Startup India, Standup India

Last month, India's Prime Minister visited Silicon Valley where he interacted with world's top entrepreneurs like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla’s Elon Musk. He spoke about his commitment and vision to “Startup India, Standup India”. Earlier in his Independence Day speech, Modi had announced a new campaign 'Startup India; Stand up India' to promote bank financing for startups and offer incentives to boost entrepreneurship and job creation in the country.

Modi Ji wants that government should focus on Innovation and entrepreneurship as they are the main solution to create job opportunities in India. The BJP government is committed to promote startups and entrepreneurship in India at a very big scale. To achieve this target BJP government plans to incentivize entrepreneurship and create conducive ecosystem for startups.

Some of the proposed initiatives are:-

A)     Low Taxation regime and Tax breaks - Many countries exempt startups from tax to encourage them. Tax breaks for investors and even employees for things like Esops (employee stock options) will help us attract more talent, create more jobs and up the risk appetite. Finance Minister has also specifically committed that corporate tax will be reduced to 25% in near future.

B)      Easy Approval Process - Starts up will get easy approval process so that they can easily promote their business and get capital from venture capitalist and angel investors.

C)      Incubation centres - The government is talking to premier engineering schools such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) to reactivate incubation centres for providing a plug-and-play model for startups

D)     In 2015, venture capital (VC) investments have hit an all- time high. After May 2014, when BJP came to power venture capital fund activity increased to a very large extent. As per government reports, the July-September quarter saw a 41 per cent rise in comparison to the same period last year, which witnessed 79 deals worth USD 264 million.

E)      Mudra Bank Initiative - To benefit 5.77 crore small business units, government launched MUDRA Bank loan scheme, which will provide credit of up to Rs 10 lakh to small entrepreneurs without collateral and act as a regulator and provide refinance for 'Micro-Finance Institutions' (MFIs).

F)      Easy Exit Policy (Bankruptcy Act) – Modi government is making exit norms easier for startup by bringing new bankruptcy act in the coming session of Parliament.

G)     Low Interest Rate Regime - The economy has entered a low interest rate regime with the latest monetary and credit policy. This is helping government to focus on investments and also help Startups to get capital at low interest rate.

H)     Lower compliance and simple registration process for small and medium enterprises.

Gopal Krishna Agarwal

National Spokesperson BJP

Gopal.agarwal@bjp.org