Nasscom charts Rs 500 cr entrepreneur mission

Nasscom had already launched its 10,000 startups programme last year and received close to 7,000 applications under it. It has provided assistance to 350 startups

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) has suggested the Centre to set up a 'Technology Entrepreneurship Mission' with a initial corpus of Rs 500-crore  as part of the Union Budget next month.

According to Nasscom, the move would significantly aid early-stage technology companies in Tier-II, III locations and provide the necessary boost for setting up technology incubators in the country.

Nasscom had already launched its 10,000 startups programme last year and received close to 7,000 applications under it. The software services body has provided assistance to 350 startups.  

“We expect the government to send out a clear signal through the mission that it recognises the importance of this segment,” Nasscom president R Chandrashekhar told mediapersons today on the sidelines of Big Data and Analytics Summit 2014 here.

Chandrashekhar said such measures would help close to 15,000 companies positioned at the bottom-end and having a revenue base of $36 billion to catch up with the industry bigwigs in the domestic and overseas circuit.

He said the envisaged fund would also assist early-stage firms, which required various tax incentives, financial support for registering the IPs they generate.

“We also expect the government to re-look into the 30 per cent upfront tax levied with respect to the angel investment into startup firms,” said Chandrashekhar.

He said as part of the body's recommendations to the government, it has urged the latter to avoid instances of extreme interpretation in the regulatory framework, which may hinder the sector's progress.

For the fiscal 2014-15, Nasscom has pegged the IT services industry growth to be 13-15 per cent upwards of $130 billion, up from $118 billion last year.

Lagging the overall market, the domestic services market, which stood at $32 billion last year, is expected to show a rupee growth 9-12 per cent this year.

Nasscom projects the Indian IT services market to clock overall revenues of $300 billion by 2020.