Startup India hub launched by Sitharaman, promises Startup exchange prog among SAARC countries

The Dollar Business Bureau

The Commerce and Industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman, launched the Startup India virtual hub yesterday. This will be a platform for all entrepreneurs to discover, connect and engage with one another.

Speaking during the inauguration, the minister said, “Startup India Virtual Hub is an effort to create a marketplace where all the stakeholders can interact, exchange knowledge, and enable each other to grow. It will streamline the lifecycle of existing and potential startups, helping them access the right resources at the right time. She also encouraged all entrepreneurs in India to utilize this portal and all enabling stakeholders to contribute to the platform as much as possible.”

She also announced the Startup Exchange programme intended to serve the SAARC countries, soon.

The portal is aimed to serve anyone and everyone who want to discover, collaborate, engage and connect with other startup, investors, mentors, incubators, government bodies, accelerators, academicians and users.

The basic principle behind developing this platform is to aggregate different offerings of the ecosystem and enable discovery by the right audience. Startup India Hub has partnered with various organizations to on-board entrepreneurs and investors, as well as build knowledge modules. To ensure accessibility across various platforms, dedicated applications are also available on both Android and iOS. 

The minister declared that India is the third largest startup ecosystem around the globe with 3-4 start-ups commencing every day. The hub will act as a nodal platform and will enable users to connect with ecosystem stakeholders, access free learning resources, tools & templates on legal, HR, accounting & regulatory issues and discussion forums. The Hub has also aggregated over 50 relevant Govt schemes/programs. In the next phase, the platform will also aggregate schemes available across various state governments. To provide a better user experience, the platform has been enabled to build smart intelligence along with Chatbots to automatically collate, update information and respond to queries. 

The programme got kickstarted with a panel discussion on, ‘Navigating the Startup Landscape’, with a representative investor, start-up founder, accelerator, mentor, incubator interacting and sharing their experiences since the time the Hub began operation in April, 2016.

The Hub a month old and over 500 stakeholders had participated during the pilot programme. Prominent names being Smartcity, Amazon Launchpad, a-Idea, Aim Smartcity and Edugild.