LUCKNOW: In a bid to give a push to start-up ventures, UP government, besides creating a corpus of Rs 150 crore with the help of Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU), has also charted a course to promote start-up ventures of women, transgender and ‘divyangjan’ (differently-abled) entrepreneurs under the new UP Start-Up Policy 2020 with additional incentives and institutional support.
However, the newly created corpus would fund the ventures at the stage of ideation, patent registration, participation in domestic and international events.
“A push to start-up ventures of women, transgender and differently-abled persons is one of its kind initiatives by any state government in India to bring these communities into the mainstream of the business world through start-up ecosystem,” said a state government spokesperson while briefing the policy.
The new policy targets to set up 100 incubators across 75 districts of the state with the goal of creating 1.5 lakh employment and self employment opportunities, including 50,000 direct jobs in the state.
As per the Additional Chief Secretary, Industries, IT and Electronics, Alok Kumar many academic institutions such as Banaras Hindu University, High Tech Institute, ABES Engineering College, Krishna Engineering College, Jaipuria Institute of Management etc. have shown interest in setting up incubators under the new policy to support start-ups.
The new Policy was cleared by the state cabinet last month as the UP government has been aiming at figuring among top three start-up congenial states in India. On May 20, UP CM Yogi Adityanath had also launched the UP Start-Up Fund to be managed by the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).
“The Fund has garnered interest among leading Venture Funds/AIF (alternative investment fund) of the country. SIDBI has so far received four applications from leading AIFs for an aggregate amount of Rs 285 crore to create the initial corpus,” said a government spokesman.
So far, the government has released Rs 41 lakh to the Start-Up Nodal Agency to be disbursed among start-ups and incubators whose proposals were approved by the Policy Implementation Committee (PIU).
According to ACS Alok Kumar, the fund will be given in the form of a sustenance allowance at various stages like idea stage, seed capital assistance at commercialization stage and the capital grant to incubators for strengthening IT infrastructure within their premises to be utilized by start-ups and other stakeholders.
While releasing a statement over the new policy, the state government claimed that since launch, the new policy had been receiving accolades by the stakeholders of the start-up ecosystem and had been hailing it as a great catalyst for creating self-employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for the state’s youth.
The statement mentioned that the CM’s concern for regional imbalance in UP, especially in the Bundelkhand and Purvanchal regions, had been addressed in the Startup Policy by offering additional incentives for startups and incubators operating from these regions.
“This will help in democratising the startup ecosystem across the state which so far was heavily dominated by tier 1 cities like Noida.”
Besides, a UP Angel Network and an online system were created for fresh entrepreneurs.