'Start-up India initiative to be launched soon'

The Start-up India, Stand up India initiative announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be launched shortly, a senior official said on Wednesday.

Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) secretary Amitabh Kant said at an event here that various government departments were working together to easen the compliance procedures so that it becomes much easier for start-ups, without having to run around for regulatory clearances.

In this connection, IT industry representative body Nasscom said in a report on Tuesday Indian start-ups are on fire, as they are on target to get a whopping $5 billion (Rs.32,558 crore) funding by this year-end.

"Total funding in the India-based start-ups is estimated to be around $5 billion by 2015, which is a massive 125 percent growth from $2.2 billion in 2014," the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) said in a report released in Bengaluru.

Overtaking Israel, India has emerged as the third biggest start-up market worldwide after the US and Britain, with 4,200 start-ups, growing 40 percent over 2014.

"Our technology start-up landscape has seen a phenomenal growth in 2015, with the country moving up to third position in terms of investments secured from private equity, venture capitalists and angel investors and number of startups," Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said, quoting from the report.

The report - "Start-up India-Momentous Rise of the Indian Start-up Ecosystem" is the second edition the apex IT body prepared with Bengaluru-based business management consultant Zinnov.

The report found cumulative funding of start-ups was $3.2 billion in 2010-14.

"India is the world's youngest start-up nation, as 72 percent of its founders are younger than 35 years. What's more, share of female entrepreneurs has jumped 50 percent this year from last year and nine percent of all start-ups are founded by women as co-founders," Chandreshekhar said.

"About 1,200 start-ups have been set up so far this year, with majority of them in B2C (business to customer) category spanning e-commerce, consumer services and aggregators," the report said.

Bengaluru, Mumbai and the National Capital Region (NCR) account for 93 percent of investments and 66 percent of all starts-ups are located in these three hi-tech clusters. Ahmedabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Pune are emerging as start-up cities.

--Indo-Asian News Service

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