UP govt drafting 'Startup Policy 2020', eyeing top 3 domestic ranking

Plans to harness 9 million MSMEs base to boost start-ups

The Uttar Pradesh government is hammering out a new ‘Startup Policy 2020’ with aim to break into the top three in domestic rankings by next year.

At present, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha and Rajasthan are among the top performing Indian states with regards to creating conducive environment for start-ups.

Under the new policy, all the 75 districts in Uttar Pradesh will have a nodal officer to promote start-ups and forge working alliances with the educational and technical institutions to promote new business ventures.

Reviewing the draft Uttar Pradesh Startup Policy on Tuesday evening here, chief minister Yogi Adityanath stressed that the state possessed large untapped potential in the startup segment even as he directed officials to create a mechanism of coordination between the different wings of the state government and higher educational institutions, agricultural universities.

There are about 9 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in Uttar Pradesh, he said adding this large pool of businesses presented humongous opportunity to cultivate a culture of start-ups.

The CM instructed the departmental heads to simply the rules regarding start-ups and to prepare an action plan to nurture such units in every sector.

The Centre has already launched a flagship Startup India initiative to build a strong ecosystem for the growth of startups, promote sustainable economic growth and generate mass employment opportunities in the country.

Meanwhile, Adityanath also directed for introducing academic courses focussing on entrepreneurial development from the university level itself and to liberalise the procedures regarding the approval, certification and promotion of startups in the state.

Earlier, the state government had proposed to set up a Rs 200 crore venture capital fund to promote MSME startups, especially pertaining to the indigenous industries. The fund will accord priority to such units, which are engaged in the manufacturing of traditional products and crafts under the aegis of state’s flagship ‘One District, One Product’ (ODOP) scheme.

SIDBI would also function as the venture capital fund manager and facilitate credit flow to the MSMEs, start-ups and artisans by coordinating with different microfinance institutions, non-banking financial companies (NBFC) and other such integrators.

The central refinance bank is also expected to share the database of state ODOP enterprises and artisans for chalking out future roadmap pertaining to their training, capacity building, credit requirement and growth.

Launched in January 2018, ODOP is aimed at scaling up traditional industries associated with each of the 75 districts in Uttar Pradesh. For example, the Adityanath government has already tied up with ecommerce major Amazon to market ‘UP Khadi’ products over its online platform.

Uttar Pradesh is uniquely famous for product specific traditional industrial hubs across 75 districts viz. Varanasi (Banarasisilk sari), Bhadohi (carpet), Lucknow (chikan), Kanpur (leather goods), Agra (leather footwear), Aligarh (lock), Moradabad (brassware), Meerut (sports goods), Saharanpur (wooden products) etc.