Kochi's Startup Village chairman shows optimism over Startup India plan

Startup Village Chairman Sanjay Vijayakumar has hailed sweeping reforms announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for budding entrepreneurs, saying it will "turbocharge" the startup ecosystem in the country. The Startup India would encourage more bright young minds to take the plunge into entrepreneurship, he said.

Vijayakumar welcomed the initiatives including a three-year tax holiday, self-certification scheme with respect to nine labour and environmental laws; and changes to insolvency norms that will allow easy exit for companies. "Self-certification for compliance will reduce regulatory burden on startups allowing them to stay up, and the ease of shutting down will encourage risk taking," he said in Kochi.

PPP incubators, such as Startup Village, will get a huge boost with the additional funding announced, Vijayakumar noted. Taking a cue from the successful PPP blueprint of Startup Village, the Centre has decided to convert 35 existing incubators to PPP model and start another 35 with private sector managing the incubators.

Kerala has gained three new incubators at IIM-K, NIT-K and IISER, Thiruvanathapuram. He said the states that are quickest in creating supporting policies and their execution, will benefit the most from the Startup India programme. Vijayakumar was among those invited to the day-long discussion on startup entrepreneurship and launch of the Startup India action plan in New Delhi.

He was chosen to moderate a session on topic "How digitisation will change India's future". On January 16, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled a slew of incentives to boost startup businesses, offering them a tax holiday and inspector raj-free regime for three years, capital gains tax exemption and Rs 10,000 crore corpus to fund them.