Raju Vanapala, Founder and CEO, LearnSocial.com
“This time, the Finance Minister has given special attention to 
the IT and ITes sector. The announcement of Rs 1000 crore for promotion of start-ups is a highly positive move. We feel that the new government has presented a progressive budget, which will help in creating an investor-friendly environment and attract more foreign and domestic investment in the IT sector. As we all know, a boom in the IT Industry with advanced technology leads to direct growth of the economy. Hence, the government has laid a special focus on this space. The new mechanism known as Self Employment and Talent Utilisation (SETU) will be a techno-financial incubation and facilitation programme to support all aspects of start-up business and other self employment activities particularly in technology-driven areas. This too will open more avenues in the sector and be a veritable shot in the arm.”
Mr. Sanjoe Jose, CEO, Talview.com on 1000 cr fund allocation for startups for your perusal.
“The budget allocation for startups should be used to promote startups in Tier 2 cities and beyond. This can lead to significant generation of quality employment at par with city counterparts for youngsters in these regions. Areas to be focused should be technology, commerce and education/training”.
Mr. Diwakar Chittora, CEO, Intellipaat.com
“It is good to see a big step from Modi government towards boosting startups. IT indicates very clearly Indian government wants to build healthy environment for startups while is prevailing in US and Singapore.
If we are look at this allocation in details there is lack of clarity how these funds will be allocated, what is the duration for this will be available , what is the procedure to get the funds and what kind of startups are eligible and what is the slab of funding .
There are still some cases where government is doing this work but it’s of no use for many. To give an example, we recently spoke to STPI Jaipur they run a program whose objective is to boost startups under name of Startup Oasis (http://www.startupoasis.in/) which is in joint venture by RIICO and we approached them for using their facility for our office. They said we are not startup as our company size is 20 people and they denied providing us their facility. They have a facility of siting capacity of atleast 30 – 40 people free from last 6-8 months but still they are not interested in giving them to us.
Big problem here is to address even though government allocates budget but there is no clarity how to utilize, who can utilize, who is the right authority to take decision and what is the definition of startup?”
