Start-up climate to attract young audience

When Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presents the Budget for FY17, hundreds of 20-something entrepreneurs, app developers, owners of budding start-ups and even founders of multi-billiondollar 'unicorns' would be glued to television. Start-ups have got a lot of importance over the past year, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally promoting the start-up revolution in India and unveiling an action plan around the ecosystem. Against that backdrop, entrepreneurs are curious over what's in store for them in this year's Budget.

Several employees as well as senior management at India's largest mobile wallet provider would be keeping their morning free on Monday to watch the Budget and do an analysis later. "We will be watching the Budget with a lot of interest and attention. A large number of our colleagues will view the Budget speech online, and spend time on the post-Budget analysis. This is a very important Budget for us. We are a digital company and most of our employees follow important events primarily online," said Shankar Nath, senior vice-president at Paytm.

As far as Budget expectations are concerned, Nath said they hope the government invests significantly in strengthening the digital infrastructure. "We would also like to see tax breaks on Budget smart phones, which support vernacular languages. We hope the KYC (know-your-customer) requirements will be simplified, and e-KYC will be the way forward in the future," he added.

Budding entrepreneurs who would have earlier skipped the Budget are looking forward to the government cementing the promises made by the Prime Minister during the Startup India event. "We would be closely watching the Budget. The government had announced a Rs 10,000-crore corpus for start-ups. We want more clarity on that. My entire team would be watching the Budget," said Rahul Gupta, CEO of Getyana.com, an artificial intelligence-based app aggregator.

Then there are those considering the Budget day as just another day. "Though we are interested in what the Budget has in store for us, we would not be following it closely. I was there at the 'Startup India' event and that was very exciting. I do not know how much start-up-specific initiatives the Budget would have. It would be more about the country, defence, agriculture and other sectors," said Ashwin Meshram, co-founder of ONE Rewardz, a mobile-based customer engagement solution service provider for retailers and brands.