Piyush Goyal Launches BHASKAR, Calls For A Non-Profit Company To House Startup India

Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal launched Bharat Startup Knowledge Access Registry (BHASKAR), a digital platform for startups, on Monday (September 16) to facilitate growth of the Indian startup ecosystem.

The platform, developed in-house by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the ‘Startup India’ programme, is designed to facilitate collaboration between startups, investors, tech enablers, mentors, government bodies, and other key stakeholders in the Indian startup ecosystem. 

Launching the platform, Goyal said it will integrate and bring together all the initiatives undertaken by the Centre for the startup ecosystem. He added that it would serve as a vehicle for promoting India’s global reputation as a startup hub. 

Goyal said that BHASKAR will allow budding entrepreneurs from beyond the metro cities to have an equal access to capital, tech, information, and other critical elements required to develop their startup ventures. 

“We hope that BHASKAR will help the players involved in the startup ecosystem connect and collaborate with each other and also compete with each other. I am sure it will bring hope, aspirations, and success to kick start an ambitious revolution,” he said. 

To join the platform, one needs to add the details of their venture to generate a Bhaskar ID. The platform allows stakeholders to register as enabler, explorer, startup founder, student, individual investor, traditional business or a mentor.

Through search features, users can locate relevant resources, collaborators, and other opportunities on the platform. As of September 15, BHASKAR has already seen registrations of 4.59 Lakh users. 

Separate House For Startup India

Besides the launch of the platform, Goyal also called for making BHASKAR and Startup India a Section 8 company. This will allow the National Startup Advisory Council to be included in the new company, the minister said. 

For the uninitiated, a Section 8 company is a non-profit organisation.

“Today, Startup India is housed in Invest India. I think Startup India, which is such a powerful ecosystem by itself, should have a house of its own. Since SIDBI manages a lot of our funds, it could be actively a part of the Section 8 company,” Goyal said.

The minister also proposed issuing shares of the Section 8 company to every startup that becomes a unicorn. With this, key startups will have an ownership of the company. The intended company will also have its own assets so that it can be nimble and will be industry led, he added. 

“The company will allow the Indian startup ecosystem to engage more directly with the government to communicate what you need from the government. This will speed up implementation of decisions like the abolishment of the angel tax,” he added. 

Speaking at the launch event, DPIIT joint secretary Sanjeev said that the Indian startup ecosystem is currently home to over 1.46 Lakh startups. He said that the department is targeting taking this number to 50 Lakh in the next few years. 

Underlining the initiatives taken to achieve this goal, Sanjeev said that startups have been registered in 84 such districts in the past six months which didn’t have any active startup earlier.

With this, India now has just 20 districts which don’t have a single startup. While the department has leads for new startups in 17 districts, it is yet to find any startups in three districts in the states of Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur. Sanjeev said that the DPIIT is targeting to see one startup in every district of India by January 16, 2025. 

It is pertinent to note that BHASKAR is the second startup registry that the Centre has launched in recent times. In February, the commerce ministry launched Bharat Startup Ecosystem Registry in pilot mode. The registry was launched to bring together all the stakeholders of the startup ecosystem to showcase entrepreneurship, technology and innovation. 

However, Sanjeev said that BHASKAR is different from the Bharat Startup Ecosystem Registry as the former provides search ability and data cleaning. Startups will be required to renew their memberships every year in order to ensure that inactive entities are not featured on the digital platform.