Startup wishlist from
Budget 2016
With Budget round the corner,
everyone is pining their hope with finance minister, and the one holding the
highest stakes are the startups in India.
Especially after Prime minister’s initiatives around ease of doing
business and building start-up friendly ecosystem, Indian
entrepreneurs have set all new expectations from the Budget 2016.
A startup friendly tax regime and
regulatory framework, easy access to capital and infrastructure, elimination of
red tape are some of the top charters in startup wish list. But the one that is
on high priority for every SME and startup is “ease of doing business”.
Since long, doing business in
India has been a complicated, time consuming and intimidating task which
discourages entrepreneurs to do business in India and realizing this fact,
government of India has taken several measures to improve its global ranking on
ease of doing business and encourage more and more entrepreneurs to start their
business in India-“Make in India”, “StartUp India, stand Up India” are to name
a few. But in order to get the intended results, still a lot needs to be done.
The government further needs to provide infrastructure and ease up the
processes that will boost the entrepreneurship in India.
So here are some of the things we expect for Indian
Start-Ups and SMEs from Union budget 2016 that will aid ease of doing Business
in India:
1) Easy Funding
One of the biggest challenge that start-ups and SMEs face is
getting funds for their Business. Though many investors want to invest in startups
in India but complex processes, heavy taxes, many regulations often discourage
them to take risk and invest in early start ups. Thus upcoming budget should
focus on having system in place that encourages easy inflow of funds from both
foreign and Indian nationals. Eased off processes, reasonable tax baseline,
incentivizing investors, FDI in Online retail can be a welcome move to
start with. Also in extension to its “pradhan
mantri mudra yojana“ scheme, the government can also ask banks to grant loans
to a certain number of start-ups as part of its priority sector lending.
2) Easy registration and approvals
Unnecessary paperwork, lengthy processes,
and multiple approvals still remain the challenges that confront entrepreneurs
and eat most of their time and energy. Thus
this year startup are hoping for fast track documentation and approval processes like single window clearance, e-signatures,
simplified online forms etc to reduce time taken to commence operations and do
business with ease. Also streamlining
the ongoing compliances with less human-interface and paper work will make the
system more efficient for startups and help them to scale up with speed.
3) Access to infrastructure
Infrastructure plays a very
important role in growth of any business and lack of proper infrastructure is
one of the major issues being faced by startups in India when setting up their
business. Hence this year Startups are hoping for better infrastructural facilities
so they can do their business easily. We want government to make substantial
investments in building smart cities with proper roads, water, electricity, high
speed internet, schools and hospitals so that startups can conduct business
with ease and best talents are encouraged to relocate and work with these
startups in their respective cities. The government should also provide well
equipped warehouses and office accommodation to early startups at economical
rental rates to encourage their business Idea.
Agriculture has always been one
of the key contributor in Indian economy hence, with upcoming Budget government
must focus on building proper cold storages and set up policies that encourage
initiatives like E-choupal to support SME’s in agri Business.
There is also need to reform the existing
telecom policies to unblock road for large public wifi projects and to promote
shared infrastructure models such as dynamic and shared spectrum, which will in
turn help in developing a better broadband and internet infrastructure for Small
businesses to compete in global marketplace with ease.
4) Support for innovators and enabler
Government’s recent “startup
India, Stand up India” initiative has already given a clear message about
government’s intent to support the “Innovative Start-ups”. Hence there is going
to be serious expectations from Budget as far as initiatives to support
innovations and new developments are concerned. We expect special and “easy-to-get” funding
scheme for startups with innovative ideas, alongwith easy financing and Tax
relief.
Besides there are lot of internet
companies including Online classifieds, digital advertisers and aggregators who
in addition to bringing in efficiency and employment also enable other business
to operate with ease, Hence incentivizing such Internet based startups or
relaxing tax laws for them will be a big encouragement and much appreciated
move.
5)
Make
doing Business easy for Women Entrepreneurs
Women entrepreneurship has also
come across as an important source of economic growth hence initiatives like
special incentives, tax rebates, entrepreneurship training, micro credit system,
subsidies and more working capital assistance for women entrepreneurs will help
overcome gender based barriers in start-up ecosystem and make doing business
easy for women entrepreneurs.
6)
Scale
up skill development
And lastly there is need to
invest substantially in education, and skill development programmes so as to
provide best in class talent to startups and also to provide necessary skill
sets to youth who wish to start a business. This requires setting up specialized skill
development centers, organizing conferences, training programs, and networking
platforms in industry specific areas.
