India To Have SAARC Meet For Startups: Nirmala Sitharaman

Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry has announced her plans to introduce a SAARC meetup for Startups. “I am going to work towards having a SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries’ meet for startups,” she said.

The SAARC nations include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The initiative aims to organise an ‘Exchange programme for startups’ between these South Asian countries. This will help startups to understand the startup ecosystem in SAARC countries. It will further give them an opportunity to share their ideas.

The minister shared the information during the launch of Startup India Virtual Hub yesterday.

She also sought the views of the Indian startup ecosystem stakeholders on the viability of the programme. And also urged startups to suggest ideas about the people who can be invited for the meet.

Prior to this, the Minister also elaborated on the ongoing discussions with Germany on creating an exchange programme for the startups of both the countries.

The IT and Commerce Minister also announced to launch a coworking space in Mangaluru. The initiative came in as she finds “that many people are moving towards Bengaluru. The city, however, is over-serviced and very expensive for many of them”. She further said, “It might take a month to launch the cowork space but the 60 capacity cowork is already booked.”

Recently, she also infused $183k in a Mangaluru Startup Incubator from the Member of Parliament (MP) fund.