Highlights from the launch of ‘Startup India’ scheme

Today, the much anticipated ‘Startup India’ mission was launched in Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi by the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley. Here are some of the highlights from the launch of the event which aims at transforming
India as a perfect breeding ground for Startups.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release the blueprint of ‘Start Up India’ programmes with special focus on Startups and Entrepreneurship Laws in order to make creation of Startups simple with less regulations.
• Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son and Uber chief Travis Kalanick are among 40 bigshots from Silicon Valley who are participating in the event.
• For early stage startups, Google will be offering $15,000 of equity funding.
• In the first session, in which Union Ministers Arun Jaitley, Nirmala Sitharaman, Onno Ruhl, Country Director, World Bank, and Amitabh Kant, Secretary, DIPP participated, Amitabh Kant emphasized on the need of Employment generation.
• Amitabh Kant added that DIPP has hired 1000 patent examiners and the department is outsourcing to IITs. He hopes that in about year’s time,  the trademark pendency will be brought to zero level.
• Arun Jaitley said that the coming Budget will have friendly taxation regime for start up. He added that the startups should be completely free from government interventions.
• Masayoshi Son, who is the founder and CEO of Softbank said that he look at the eyes and ideas of an entrepreneurs before finalizing on any investment plan. He also believes that the information revolution is going to be 100 times bigger than the industrial revolution. Commenting on the mobile connectivity and electricity situation in India, he said that the government needs to invest heavily in these areas. On the other hand he believes that India can become a bigger and better market than China.

Prime Minister Modi tweeted a while back.

Stay tuned for more updates on the event.