Startups Can Soon Apply For Govt. Schemes Through Startup India Hub

The Startup India Hub is gearing up to enable startups to apply for government schemes and venture funds directly from the platform.

The move is to address the lack of awareness about government schemes and to deal with the difficulties startups face to apply for them.

Talking about the new initiative Karan Anand, assistant VP Invest India said, “We are in the process of adding more functionalities to the virtual hub to make it more effective as a platform. The real challenge is that people don’t know about government schemes. Currently, we are only showing the schemes on the platform but the next step is to allow startups to apply for these schemes and enable them to track their application form’s status online.”

The Startup India Hub will most likely host an all-stakeholder event in August. This will include accelerators, incubators, and venture funds. “We will be giving them a formal profile and log-in details so that their application procedures can go live on the Startup India Hub,“ said Anand.

He further added that the department has also tied up with companies that have launched funds, including BPCL. They have signed MoUs with these partners to help them invest the fund.

The Startup India Virtual Hub was inagurated in June 2017 by Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry. The Startup India Virtual Hub currently serves as an online platform where all the stakeholders of the startup ecosystem can collaborate and synergise their efforts. The portal hosts startups, investors, funds, mentors, incubators, accelerators, government bodies, academic and general users.

The portal provides regular updates from the startup world with information from over 20 media channels. The platform aims to impart education to aspiring entrepreneurs at a grassroots level and provide a digital infrastructure for applying to all government-related activities.

The platform is managed by a 15 member Startup India Hub team under the direct guidance of the Department of Industrial Policy And Promotion (DIPP). Currently, the portal has listed over 150 schemes and benefits. Apart from this, the government is also planning to launch the virtual hub in six other languages.

(The development was reported by ET)