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Punjab based start-ups give thumbs-up to fund booster in Union Budget

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Vijay C Roy Chandigarh
Last year, when Chandigarh-based Varun Gupta wished to started his own venture in pre- and post-hospitalisation care at home and assist living for elderly, the only way was to bootstrap at every step. Today his company is one of North India's fastest growing health care and personal wellness services and it plans to raise $3 million to invest in technologies and geographical expansions, for which talks are going on with potential investors.

Like Varun, start-ups like Gunbir Sidhu (now noted Punjabi Film producer), Vikram R Singh (managing director, Antier Solutions) ,Mahesh Gupta(founder, Fostinno) also started their venture either by personal savings or through family support. Since funding through venture capital route is at a nascent stage in India, majority of the start ups initially rely on family, friends or angel investors. This is called bootstrapping, which entails, starting one's own venture but later on expanding in the area of their expertise.
 
Amidst this scenario an announcement by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his maiden budget to create a fund with a corpus of Rs 100 billion for providing equity through venture capital funds, quasi equity, soft loans and other risk capital to encourage new startups, is panacea for budding entrepreneurs.

Welcoming this move by the government towards allocating 100 billion fund for start-ups, Varun Gupta , director and co-founder, Carepur Services Pvt Ltd said, "This will not only motivate start-ups but also bring in more innovative ideas and provide greater engagement opportunities to the start-ups. Lot of first generation entrepreneurs struggle to implement their ideas in absence of cash inflow. This, I believe has come as a booster for start-ups like us and will definitely foster great ideation mindset in individuals to demonstrate their abilities."

Sharing his start-up success story, Vikram R Singh, Managing Director, Antier Solution (Pvt) Ltd said, "In 2011, I started my venture through my resources with two people. Today we have a team of over 40 people dealing in IT solutions and mobile applications. The start-ups have to often struggle with access to capital, so this is a positive step in this direction. When an entrepreneur relies on bootstrapping for expansion, its like taking baby steps and createsing stumbling blocks in exponential growth. In such a scenario, the announcement by the government is a positive step but challenges will remain especially in implementation."

The company engaged in providing business-to-business and business-to-customer IT solutions and mobile applications. Similar is the success story of Gunbir Singh Sidhu, now noted Punjabi film producer, who did his masters degree in Chip designing in 2003 from Imperial College, London. With no start-up ecosystem in the northern region and funding paucity, he started his career in 2004, as a humble second hand car salesman and started business with Rs 1.5 lakh in India from his personal savings.

After experimenting in various businesses including real estate, farming, dairy, Singh ventured into film production in 2012. His firm Basic Brothers Productions (Pvt) Ltd, has interests in film production and distribution, is a flagship company of the group having diverse interests in education, real estate, farming and finance.

On a new start-up fund, Sidhu said, "It will encourage more and more entrepreneurs to start their own business ventures and this will surely make India a progressive country. Start-ups bring in a lot of technological innovation in the industry and most of the successful companies in the world have been small enterprises."

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First Published: Jul 21 2014 | 8:32 PM IST

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