Government assures startups on their concerns

The Dollar Business Bureau

Underlining that the government needs to do much more to encourage entrepreneurship in the country, Commerce and Industry Ministry Nirmala Sitharaman said her ministry will take up the issues highlighted by startups with the related ministries and regulators.

On Thursday, 28 startups representing several industries met the commerce minister and raised various industry-related concerns related to compliance burden, regulators and taxation.

"We were keen to know their views on how their start-up activities are going on, their expectations from the government and the difficulties they have. The difficulties may be related to various ministries... What is it that they want us to do further," Sitharaman told reporters.

"However, a lot remains to be done. The ministry believes the way forward is to have all the stakeholders on board to take the initiative forward and act as a facilitator for startups to flourish," the commerce ministry said in a statement.

The participants raised some of the issues such as complicated paper work involved in government compliances, IPR pendency period, complex service tax, lack of prompt response from incubators for generating recommendation letters, and tedious import/export procedures, while urging the minister to make them start-up friendly to encourage entrepreneurship.

Following the meeting, the Ministry said in a statement that the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) would soon be taking necessary measures to address the raised issues and concerns and that It would post the details of the compliances of state and central laws on the Startup India portal.

The DIPP assured it would facilitate the startup meetings with the concerned departments and authorities to ensure that the startups can get their issues addressed without any delay.

"DIPP would also explore the possibility of developing an app which would enable startups to know which subject relates to which ministry or regulator; and it would prepare a handbook to guide startups on various compliances and the processes involved," it added.