With BJP set to return to power, startups and entrepreneursThursday hoped that the new government will continue to drive growth agenda fornew businesses, taking further steps to ease regulatory burden and make capitalmore accessible to them.
Startups said the new government should accelerate themomentum on tech innovation, and focus on training and skilling initiatives forentrepreneurs – all of which will cement India’s position as a hotbed forstartups.
“The new government must put in place measures such astraining hubs for entrepreneurs across India to ease flow of capital,regulatory compliance and more. Further, these hubs must act as one-stopknowledge, research and development centres so that startups can focus more oninnovation and less on processes,” said Bhavin Turakhia, CEO, Zeta andFlock.
The industry also urged the new government to make earlystage and growth capital more easily accessible for startups, relax regulatorycompliance procedures, and develop incubation centres – to aid employmentgeneration and spur growth.
Satyam Kumar, CEO and Co-Founder, LoanTap FinancialTechnologies said that the compliances for startups, while necessary, tend tobe “onerous and costly” at times.
“Expectation from Government is to make process simplerto comply with – a single clearance window – which ensures end-to-end solutionor procedure to be followed by a start-up that enables pro-active compliance aswell as helps to avoid unnecessary costs,” he explained.
Slonkit Founder, Javed Tapia said that enabling measureswill help India leverage its entrepreneurial potential and “become ahotbed of unicorn start-ups across different sectors”.
Razorpay CEO and co-founder, Harshil Mathur noted that thegovernment in the past maintained a strong focus on Digital India and FinTech,and hoped that the growth agenda will continue.
“A lot of programs were initiated towards digitisationof the country and increasing access to fintech last year – this must progresswith a fresh commitment to democratise digital payments…One reform that I amexpecting is the tax and GST benefit for businesses opting for digitaltransactions,” he said.
Sampad Swain, Instamojo CEO, said he was hopeful that thegovernment would introduce measures to streamline taxes and ease regulatorypolicies for small and medium businesses in the country to promote ease ofdoing business.
“Also, we believe that the government should addressthe major challenges faced by MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises),primarily the absence of adequate financial options and skilled labour which isa significant deterrent to the progress of the sector,” Swain said.
Ankur Pahwa, Partner and National Leader, e-commerce andconsumer internet, EY India, said that while measures have been taken toprovide relaxation from Angel Tax, there are still some “unfulfilledexpectations linked to its simplification” in the long term.
“More attention is needed to protect entrepreneurs; atthe same time enable promoters and investors to raise capital throughdifferential voting rights. While the government has made considerable andcommendable headway in ease of doing business, further steps linked to easingof norms will fuel the start-up ecosystem,” he added.
Over the last few months, many start-ups had received notices under Section 56 of Income Tax Act to pay taxes on angel funds received by them.