Startup India Gets an "F", Will be Tweaked!

BENGALURU: It was a well-lit stage in Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi! A crowd of entrepreneurs, media person, and budding industrialists had assembled! All were expecting a big announcement being made by our PM, Mr. Narendra Modi that would change their startup voyage for good. As the PM arrived and delivered his big speech, the 16^th day of the month of January, 2016 saw entrepreneurs hopping with joy! The PM announced “Start Up India, Stand Up India”, and in a rhetorical way initiated this ambitious Startup India Movement.

Media and start up community were ecstatic about this new initiative. Zee News reported the launch of this initiation by giving a title “PM Narendra Modi launches Start-up India movement to boost entrepreneurship, job”. Softbank CEO termed this initiative as the beginning of big bang start up boom in India. It has been 5 months since then, and this initiative taken by the Prime Minister is not bearing any fruit! Not only fewer-than expected startups applied for recognition, but most of them were also disqualified due to faulty paperwork. According to a report by Subhayan Chakraborty & Sahil Makkar of Business Standard, nearly 400 start-up enterprises had filed applications under the government’s StartUp India programme which is very low! What’s makes this failure even grave was the fact that of the first 189 whose credentials were probed from the 400 applicants till June 17^th 2016, barely 30 make it, and only one qualifies for IPR benefits.

According to the angel list, there are around 17,074 start ups in India, and if the number of applicant firms in the Start Up India initiative is low as 400, it is safe to say that the initiative has indeed failed! Launched with much fanfare five months, Startup India, Standup India has failed to attract much participation from the entrepreneurs.

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