Startup India Recognised Over 18K Startups, Created 1.87 Lakh Jobs: Ramesh Abhishek

The Startup India programme has been called one of the biggest success stories of the Indian government in the past five years. Startup India has brought a lot of focus on startups at the state and central level, improved fundraising for many ventures and has become the startup ecosystem’s enabler in many other ways.

Ramesh Abhishek, the head of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) which is part of the Startup India initiative, has revealed that over 18K startups have been recognised under the Startup India initiative. He added that in May 2019, 814 startups were given recognition under the programme, which comes to more than one startup recognised per hour. These startups are spread across 513 districts of 29 States and 6 UTs in India, with 18,861 startups recognised overall.

Abhishek added that a total of 16105 DPIIT-recognised startups have lead to the creation of 1.87 Lakh jobs, which results in an average of over 11 direct jobs per startup. He also claimed that each direct job leads to the creation of three jobs and the total jobs created by these startups are estimated at more than 5.6 Lakh. However, it must be noted that the dataset behind these findings was not revealed by Abhishek.

Abhishek further added that with Intellectual Property support, 1,496 startups had got 80% rebate in patent filing fees, 2,761 get 50% rebate in trademark filing fees while 389 startups avail expedited examination. A total of 103 patents have been granted with the fastest one being granted in 81 days. The ease of filing a patent makes it easier for innovative small businesses to compete against larger companies or conglomerates.

Additionally, Abhishek revealed that the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) has committed INR 2570 Cr to 45 Venture Funds, to catalyse investments of more than INR 25K Cr. So far, 244 startups have received funding of Rs 1561 Cr , he added.

Startups can now get government orders on ‘GeM Startup Runway’, while getting an exemption from prior turnover, prior experience and earnest money deposits. Abhishek’s tweet claimed that 1,862 startups have registered under GeM, and have received 7,697 orders worth INR 275 Cr until April 2019.

DPIIT’s last annual report covered 2017-18. It has yet come out with an official report of last year. The department has not yet confirmed the data behind some of the specific claims made to Inc42.

Startup India To Focus On Women Beneficiaries

One of the biggest recent announcements from DPIIT was in relation to Startup India’s steps to promote women entrepreneurs and startups led by women.

In order to achieve this, the programme would organise interactions of women entrepreneurs with venture capital funds and banks to ease access to equity and debt financing, along with other steps.

• At least one-third of the beneficiaries of all programs organised by DPIIT should be women
  Work with ministries and state governments to ensure that a minimum of one-third participants in their startup and entrepreneurship development programs are women
• For funding support to women-led startups, DPIIT shall organise interactions with venture funds supported by SIDBI and lending institutions, including banks
• Startup India will design women-focused entrepreneurship development programmes both online and offline
  To support advisory, women-led startups can view and connect with each other across interests of legal, tax, financial and other service providers

Additionally, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has proposed setting up ‘India Startup Fund’ with a corpus of INR 1,000 Cr to support tech startups, aimed at facilitating or setting up 50K new startups in the country by 2024.