Narendra Modi to launch "Start-up India" movement tomorrow

NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the "Start-up India" movement at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi tomorrow. The launch event is aimed at celebrating the entrepreneurship spirit of country’s youth, and will be attended by CEOs and founders of top Start-ups from across the country and abroad.

The Prime Minister will visit a virtual exhibition and interact with Start-up entrepreneurs. He will release the Start-up Action Plan, and address the gathering.

The Prime Minister's arrival at the venue will be preceded by a day-long workshop on start-up entrepreneurship, which shall include panel discussions on various aspects of the subject.

A unique Question and Answer (Q&A) session titled “Face-to-face with Policy-makers” is also being organized wherein Secretaries of Key Government Ministries and Departments will answer questions on how Government will be creating an enabling ecosystem for Start-ups. The objective is to reinforce commitment of the Government towards creating an ecosystem that is conducive for growth of Start-ups.

The event shall also feature interactive talks with global leaders and venture capitalists such as Mr. Masayoshi Son (Founder and CEO, SoftBank) and Mr. Adam Nuemann (Founder, WeWork).

The event will be telecast live in IITs, IIMs, NITs, IIITs and Central Universities and to youth groups in over 350 districts of India.

What Industries say on Start-up India

"Start-up India is a great initiative by the government to boost the Start-up Eco system in the country. As part of the initiative, Government should look into easing the process of starting a business by making the entire process technology based," said Shailesh Jain, Co-founder, Mirraw.com.

"Also, Indian start-ups are in need of better infrastructure. We also need to re-look at our education system and incorporate a more practical fact driven system. Subjects like entrepreneurship should be made part of the curriculum," he added.

“It is perhaps the first time that we are seeing the organic groundswell of entrepreneurial talent brimming with Ideas using technology to launch their business models, called ‘Start-up’s’ getting noticed by the Government in such a short time to come up with their own campaign ‘Start Up India, Stand Up India’ with the objective of providing impetus to India’s new found status of being the Start-Up capital of the world," said Anil Valluri, President, NetApp India & SAARC.

"Start-Up’s will create disruptions in the market place, accelerate innovation and become a platform for new ideas to be rewarded. This is a welcome addition to the energy that India is displaying both domestically and internationally and can only add to India’s growth story," he added.

"The start-up India movement is set to boost country’s entrepreneurial spirit. Over the last 8 to 10 years many initiatives have come forward to uplift the start-up culture but with PM Modi's encouragement, it is a matter of time where we'd be as impactful as Silicon Valley and others. We are in need of private enterprise of that scale that can promote these initiates like Silicon Valleym" said Pramod Saxena, Chairman Oxigen Services.

"The private equity generally rushes in one direction but for the country’s perspective this should be seen differently. The government initiative should be to promote all round entrepreneurial development in support to start-up ventures that comes from different diversified fields which is huge in numbers; especially when we talk about agriculture, food and clean energy," he added.

"Also, banks are not taking position to support early stage projects hence only areas of interest to VCs/ PVT Equity are seeing growth in startup’s. If government ensures a frictionless access to early stage capital to young entrepreneurs, we will see many more startup’s in areas of priority for country's overall development," said Saxena.

"In the payment sector we have seen a lot of development and government support. There are lot of other sectors which are open and need entrepreneurial and equity support," he added.