The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) constituted under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has issued the notification for ‘Startup India’ initiative on 17th February, 2016. The initiative aims to create a conducive environment for startups in India and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in the country. The notification elaborates the definition of an entity eligible for consideration as a startup and specifies the procedural requirements to be complied with by the entity in order to obtain several benefits of the initiative, which include –
- Single Window Clearance even with the help of a mobile application
- Setup of a 10,000 crore fund
- 80% reduction in patent registration fee
- A 90-day exit window under the modified Bankruptcy Code
- Tax holiday for capital gains tax and tax in profits for 3 years
- Industry-academia partnership and incubation
A mobile app will soon be launched by DIPP for processing the requests for startups. Until then certain alternative arrangements have been suggested to be made for processing startups’ requests under the notification. The Startup India Action Plan is available on the website of Ministry of Commerce at http://commerce.nic.in.