[ad_1]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday urged Indian startups to address the challenges facing the country, urging them to target the countryside, as he announced that January 16 would be observed as National Startup Day to spread the startup culture across India.
During a virtual interaction with start-ups, Modi spoke about various steps taken by the government to improve the ease of doing business for such units, calling them the “backbone of the country’s development”.
“I urge India’s startups to also target the village. This is both an opportunity and a challenge,” he said, noting that rural and semi-urban areas are looking for a new wave of expansion and the improvement in last-mile delivery of goods and services in such areas has led to the growth of the talent pool in rural markets.
The Prime Minister noted that there are three key aspects to the government’s efforts to strengthen innovation, entrepreneurship and the startup ecosystem in India.
“First, to free entrepreneurship, innovation from the trap of government processes and bureaucratic silos. Second, to build institutional mechanisms to promote innovation. And third, to support young innovators and young enterprises,” he said.
Modi noted that measures such as removing angel tax issues, simplifying tax procedures, allowing self-certification for certain labor and environmental compliances and removing over 25,000 compliances have helped strengthen the startup ecosystem.
He also highlighted that the government’s efforts to boost the startup ecosystem have yielded results in terms of increasing patent, trademark and copyright registrations.
“While 4,000 patents were sanctioned in 2013-14, more than 28,000 patents were granted last year. While around 70,000 trademarks were registered in 2013-14, in 2021 over 2.5 lakh trademarks have been registered,” the Prime Minister said, adding that the number of registered copyrights has increased to over 16 000 from 4000 during the same period.
Government officials noted that Indian startups are witnessing more investment interest. “The kind of interest being shown in the startup investment climate… In the last one year, annual investment in startups has increased from USD 11 billion to USD 36 billion,” Anurag Jain, Secretary, Department of Industry Promotion and Home of Commerce (DPIIT), said at the National Startup Awards event.
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal urged startups to approach the government on how it can further ease the regulatory burden on them by making processes simpler.
Speaking at the National Startup Awards, he urged startups to develop content in Indian languages, promote products and solutions with greater social and economic impact, encourage startups in every region, create innovation zones and adopt the most -good practices from around the world.
[ad_2]
Source link