Top CEOs, foreign investors to offer inputs to start-up plan

About 40 leading business leaders, venture capitalists and around 2,000 start-ups would offer key inputs to the action plan to be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 16 for encouraging budding entrepreneurs.
The government on January 16 is holding a day-long session on start-ups in which around 2,000 new age ventures, 40 CEOs, and venture capitalists would participate, DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant told reporters here.
"The Prime Minister will unveil the action plan of the Startup India. About 40 leading CEOs, venture capitalist, angel investors from Silicon Valley will come down," he said.
He said that by nature, start-up action plan cannot be a one policy.

The plan would highlight initiatives and schemes being undertaken by the government to address various aspects relating to developing a conducive start-up ecosystem in the country, he said.
"Start-ups cut across the entire ecosystem. Everybody needs to create an ecosystem for start-ups. We are working together to create a unique ecosystem for them," he said.

"We want the start-ups to grow and flourish. There are too many issues on compliance. The intention is that government will keep itself away," he added.
He said that the action plan would help the sector in penetrating tier-2 and tier-3 cities in sectors such as manufacturing and healthcare.

Speaking about the programme, he said the event will feature interactive talks with global leaders such as Founder and CEO of SoftBank Masayoshi Son; Founder of WeWork Adam Nuemann, Uber Founder Travis Kalanick.
Google will be conducting an innovative session titled 'Laucnhpad Accelerator' which will involve live pitches being made by early state start-ups to potential investors.
"Whosoever is able to get into the 'Launchpad Accelerator' will get a cheque of USD 50,000 from Google...Equity funding into their start-ups," Kant said.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would inaugurate the event at 'Vigyan Bhawan' here.
A question and answer session titled 'Face-to-face with Policy makers' is also being organised wherein Secretaries of key departments will answer questions on how government will be creating an enabling ecosystem for start-ups.

The panel shall comprise of Secretaries from departments
including Revenue, Human Resources and Development, Corporate Affairs and Financial Services, Economic Affairs besides representatives from Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).
The event would be a non-stop day long global workshop on start-up entrepreneurship and shall include panel discussions on topics such as 'Unleashing Entrepreneurship and Innovation: What do Indian Startups Need to Grow and Prosper'; 'Celebrating Women: Stories of Innovative Women Entrepreneurs', 'How digitisation will change India's future'; 'Making Indian Healthcare Leapfrog' and 'Financial inclusion is within reach'.
The panel discussion on 'Show Me the Money: How do we Capitalize Entrepreneurship?' shall be chaired by Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha.

Nikesh Arora, President & Chief Operating Officer, SoftBank shall be interacting with participants on aspects relating to Start-up funding.
A virtual exhibition is also being organised as part of the event to showcase some of the unique and innovative work done by Start-ups in the country.
The event will be telecast live in IITs, IIMs, NITs, IIITs and Central Universities and to youth groups in over 350 districts of India.
DIPP is organising the event along with Invest India and Start-up ecosystem players iSpirt, YourStory, NASSCOM, SheThePeople.Tv and Kairos Society and youth wings of FICCI and CII.
Kant said that India should become a nation of job creators rather than job seekers.

"We would like all the youth of India to get connected with this unique movement on start-ups," he added.