What's New

Describe briefly about the Startup India initiative and the recent achievements of the program.

Introduction:

Startup India is a flagship program of the Central government. It was announced in the year, 2015. Providing an ecosystem where new ideas will be converted into businesses is the core objective of the initiative.

Body:

Areas of Focus:

Key features:

• Freedom from inspection for first 3 years
• No capital gain tax for first 3 years
• No tax for first 3 years of the startup
• 90-day exit window for winding up the operations

Achievements:

• Setting up of GeM portal where startups can sell the products to the government.
• Speeding up of processes related to the Intellectual Property Rights.
• Total amount was setup at 10000 Cr
• Providing the financial assistance through startup India Seed Fund Scheme.
• Self certification norms has been introduced
• Creation of innovation hubs

Conclusion:

Various state governments have also shown a lot of interest in this regard and hence there was a ranking scheme introduced in 2018. The new rankings were declared in 2020. Gujarat was declared the best performer and other states like Karnataka, Kerala were the top performers. Thus, enabling the states to compete with each other and provide better opportunities to the startups.