Budding entrepreneurs will have incubators, startup hubs in their own states soon

In a bid to support entrepreneurial dreams, the Commerce and Industry Ministry has urged all the states and the Union Territories to establish a 'Startup Hub' and incubators.

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has already set up the startup hub in April, which guides and handhelds startups, and has resolved over 12,000 queries of startups over telephone, email and twitter.

"DIPP has requested state governments and administration of UTs to set up Startup Hub as well as incubators to help startups during various stages of development," DIPP release stated.

It also said that the department will write to top companies requesting them to support the initiative by setting up new incubators or scale up existing incubators in collaboration with educational institutes.

Further, it said that seven proposals for Research Parks, 16 proposals for TBIs (technology business incubators) and 13 proposals for startup centres have been recommended by the National Expert Advisory Committee formed by the HRD Ministry.

"These proposals shall be implemented in the current financial year," it added.

All these steps are part of the Startup Action Plan announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January.

The government unveiled a slew of incentives to boost startup businesses, offering them a tax holiday and inspector raj-free regime for three years, capital gains tax exemption and Rs 10,000 crore corpus to fund them.

India has the third-largest number of startups globally.

Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has asked the finance ministry to consider raising tax holiday for startups to seven years to encourage budding entrepreneurs.