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.