Hyderabad, Feb 1 (IANS): T-Hub CEO Ravi Narayan has welcomed the Union Budget 2021-22 and termed it a pleasant surprise for the startup and innovation ecosystem as it announced everything best an entrepreneur could wish for.
"We can easily anticipate existing ventures grow confidently and more new ventures coming up rapidly due to some specific budget highlights," he said.
He is of the view that the ecosystem deserved it as India's startup ecosystem is now the world's third-largest with close to 38 unicorns, of which 12 came up last year.
He expects that extension for startups on both the eligibility for claiming tax-holiday and the capital gains exemption for investment by another year will make a major shift overnight in boosting the aspirations and enthusiasm of Indian entrepreneurs, specially for the ones whose businesses were affected downwards due to pandemic.
"They will rethink before shutting off their operations, or might want to restart any recently closed enterprise as they will see the silver-lining from the budget this year," he said.
India's largest technology incubator, T-Hub is a public private partnership between the state government and three premier academic institutes - International Institute of Information Technology- Hyderabad (IIIT-H), Indian School of Business (ISB) and National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) University of Law.
Narayan believes that talented NRIs who were asked to return to India or the ones planning will also find a good reason to settle back in India and set up a tech product business. "The revised norm and the opportunity to form One Person Company with zero turnover norms and without any restrictions is now accessible even faster in 120 days than 182 days earlier," he said.
The threshold of annual turnover for small companies being raised from Rs.2 crores to Rs.20 crores is yet another major boosting factor for the unborn, new, or existing startups, Narayan added.
He, however, feels a lot more needs to be done in the areas of funding startups, R&D centres for budding entrepreneurs in tier II and tier III cities too as well as directing MNCs to value more Indian innovations or creating more robust innovation centres in their campuses. "Furthermore, we have realised over the years that the translation from a budget statement to its impact on the ground takes time. We need to shorten the time while maintaining the true spirit of the budget," he said
"Doubling the MSME fund allocation is a great boost, The MSME sector is vital for employment generation, as also for an economic recovery to sustain. Also, the extension by an year on the tax holiday for startups is a much-needed boost for the startups," said Rahul Kanuganti, CEO, FLYTTA, a mobility startup.
Mohit Goel, CEO, Diagnocare solutions, commented that the budget is quite encouraging for startup ecosystem and innovators by extending the tax holiday and capital gain exemption for investment in this space. Further reducing the time of setting up one person company will further boost ease of doing business and motivate upcoming entrepreneurs to innovate and provide valuable solutions, he added.