The government has certified 20 private organisations, including iSprit and Nasscom as incubators under the Startup India Action Plan.
Currently, under the Startup India initiative, only 278 government-run incubators are allowed to certify and recommend startups.
A startup incubator is a collaborative program designed to help new startups succeed. Incubators help entrepreneurs solve some of the problems commonly associated with running a startup by providing workspace, seed funding, mentoring, and training. Startup incubators are usually non-profit organisations, which are usually run by both public and private entities.
Currently, there is a scarcity of incubators in India. Therefore, the government is now trying to engage private organisations for incubation programs.
Under the Atal Innovation Mission, the government plans to create sector specific incubators, along with 500 tinkering labs. These incubators will promote entrepreneurship, provide pre-incubation training and a seed fund for high growth startups as part of the Startup India Action Plan.
Last month, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) received 571 applications from startups wanting to avail the tax benefits announced in the Startup India Action Plan. Out on these 106 had the required documents – one of them being the incubator’s certificate qualifying them as an innovative business.
Only two startups, managed to get the approval of the inter-ministerial board for tax and intellectual property rights-related benefits.
DIPP has appointed a monitoring committee take stock of the action plan’s implementation once a month. The committee is headed by DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek. DIPP has also started mapping incubation centres across the country with a special focus on tier-II and III cities.
The development was reported by ET.
