India is likely to see a doubling in the number of start-ups registered with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) by 2023, according to department secretary Guruprasad Mohapatra.
“There are 50,000 registered start-ups in India, and there will be 50,000 more by 2024 at this pace,” Mohapatra said at the World Economic Forum-organised India Economic Summit on Friday. According to the official, the government is keen on easing regulatory burdens on start-ups with a “tremendous attitudinal change among government departments”, which has only accelerated post the rollout of the new start-up policy in 2015-16.
“Regulators and officials now see potential in start-ups, and are invested in boosting their size and number,” he said. Mohapatra also noted that it would be best for the country in the long-run if start-ups were “kept away from regulations”.
“The more we allow them to operate in spaces they want to operate, the better it is,” he said. Fellow panelists agreed, with OYO’s chief executive officer Aditya Ghosh observing that what business needs from the government is “investment in infrastructure and ecosystems, much of which relies on removing ground-level constraints, and providing light-touch but adequate regulation that ensures Indian companies enjoy credibility as they scale-up globally”.
Meanwhile, Mohapatra also pointed out that the government has also ramped up funding operations, with the central government-driven Rs 10,000 crore fund of funds clearing nearly 300 cases for investments.
While the DPIIT is the monitoring agency, the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) is the operating agency for this fund.
“We want to increase the funds available to SIDBI to intervene and we are trying to open up some other channels along with SIDBI to do this activity,” the secretary said. The government has already rolled out a ‘Start-up India Action Plan’ under which it has announced incentives including a tax holiday, inspector raj-free regime, capital gains tax exemptions and a Rs 10,000-crore corpus to extend necessary funding to deserving start-ups.
“We want to create an ecosystem that every start-up in India feels proud to come up and we want to make it pan-India rather than being concentrated in metros,” Mohapatra said.