Gujarat Govt Supports 175 Startups With $3.2 Mn Financial Aid Over 2 Years

Supporting the Centre’s Startup India movement, Gujarat government claims to have provided 175 startups with financial assistance worth $3.2 mn (INR 22 Cr) over two years.

This is in line with the aim of the government to facilitate 2,000 startups by 2021.

M K Das, principal secretary to the chief minister, was addressing the plans of Vibrant Gujarat: Startup and Technology Summit 2018, which will be held on October 11-13 to project the startup “revolution” in the state.

“We have disbursed Rs 22 crore to 175 startups in Gujarat,” he said.

In the Electronic & IT/ITES Startup Policy (2016-21), the state government had set a target to facilitate the establishment of about 2,000 startup firms during the five-year period.

Das also explained, “These are the ones that the state government is funding. Several others have received private funding.”

Gujarat stood third after Karnataka and Delhi in nurturing startups, he added.

According to Sunil Parekh, chairman of the startup committee of FICCI, apart from the 175 government-funded startups, there are 26 startups in the state.

“These startups have been funded by HNIs (high net-worth individuals),” he said.

It is being speculated that there are about 35 incubators in Gujarat against a target of 50 set under the 2016 policy. Apart from incentives offered under this policy, the state also has a Gujarat Startup/Innovation Scheme 2015 and Student Startup and Innovation Policy 2017.

In March 2018, Gujarat University recently launched its Startup and innovation policy. The startup and innovation policy envisions Gujarat University as a hub of global standards for creating, nurturing and supporting innovative businesses across a variety of sectors.

The policy creates several initiatives, reforms, and mandates which are divided into several platforms like infrastructural platform, academic platform, skill development platform etc.

Being the first state to announce IT startup policy in June 2016, Gujarat also became the first state to introduce Student Startup and Innovation Policy in January 2017.

As part of the initiative, a State Innovation Fund with a corpus of $29.3 Mn (INR 200 Cr) will be provided to the students during the next five years. For this, $14.6 Mn (INR 100 Cr) will be allocated by the State Government and the remaining amount will be created by internal sources.

Beyond Karnataka launching its dedicated startup policy, other states such as Maharashtra, Kerala, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Punjab also launched new startup policies to push entrepreneurship in the respective regions.

Recently, Goa launched its startup policy which envisions making Goa one of the most preferred startup destinations of India and featuring in the top 25 startup destinations in Asia by 2025.

According to a report by Invest India: Startup India, more than 20K startups in the country have created a total market value of $50 Bn and made it the second-largest startup ecosystem in the world.

[The development was reported by The Indian Express.]