Mr. Suman Reddy

Vice President and Managing Director Pegasystems

“The Finance Minister has presented a favorable budget this year. The Govt. has fulfilled industry expectations to certain extent. The changes in transfer pricing with respect to the technicalities involved is the welcome move for the IT industry especially MNCs. This clarity will have a major impact of creating favorable investment climate for IT MNCs. The clarity in retrospective taxation with the intention of providing a stable and predictable tax regime is another crucial initiative to enhance investor climate in the country. The initiative to plan and set up smart cities, enhance rural skill development and entrepreneurship and specially set aside a corpus Rs 10,000 crores is a huge boost the entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem. Moreover setting up of more national level institutions such as IITs and IIMs will add to the growth of skilled talent pool in the country. Setting up of industrial corridors in tier 1, tier2 cities to improve the industry network is another commendable measure from the Govt. The income tax relief provided to individual marginal tax payers is appreciated as it enables control inflation at the macro level. Overall in my opinion it was a budget with strong decisions and a roadmap to reduce fiscal deficit thereby bringing India back on the growth path.”

Ramesh Loganathan Vice President and Managing Director

Progress Software & President HYSEA (formerly known as ITsAP)

“To target 4% deficit with decent growth stimulants is a good balancing act.  It is a reasonably good budget for the IT industry tackling incumbent industry operational elements with enabling serious future growth. With operational aspects addressed such as transfer pricing clarification and also the note on retrospective taxes (hoping for easier remediation of TP assessments), the industry welcomes the move. All the investment and FDI focus in the budget, will spur general growth that will definitely have an effect on domestic IT consumption; which is now about 20% of the IT industry revenues.  Transfer pricing clarification is good for existing multinational companies in IT sector.  This was single biggest issue the industry had. E -visas is another good provision which will encourage and enable more business travel in the IT sector.

Third is the long term growth, the most exciting aspect in the budget is the stipulations to spur the startups.  10k cr startup fund is an amazing enabler.  While we have to await the details in the mechanics, this will definitely spur a lot if activity in the startup space. My hope is that most of these funds should be in the seed and angel stage. Combined with these, the district level incubators/accelerators will fuel grassroots activity around entrepreneurship to bring about a basic social mindset shift towards positively appreciating technology entrepreneurship.  In a society that is otherwise obsessed with just jobs. Having said that, if some stipulations in crowd funding were provided, would have been good. But the startup fund more than makes up for this.

FDI increase will infuse capital and enable growth.   No retrospective tax amendments this ‘may’ help industry as we go through transfer pricing and other issues.  Good provisions for infrastructure. These will help spur economic activity apart from enhancing the infrastructure.  Good news for Hyderabad given the number of Infrastructure companies based here.  Smart cities, REIT and other infra stipulations are very encouraging apart from the extensive stipulations around the industrial corridors. This will certainly enable better projects in cities like Hyderabad”

Mr. Debasis Chatterji CEO  Netxcell Limited

Overall, a good step forward by FM with a different approach. Certain initiatives taken in this budget by the Govt. are commendable such as – For the first time currency note will be friendly to blinds in India. This budget has a clear map of reducing fiscal deficit. Income tax relief for individual tax payers is a big relief and a tool to tackle inflation. The Govt. has provided a huge boost for personal saving by enhancing PPF from 1 to 1.5 lakh. Initiatives for boosting the manufacturing industry and enabling a good industry network between states will have tremendous impact. In my opinion this was a pro people and pro industry budget with an emphasis on the growth of North East India.

Mr. Murali Bukkapatnam

President – TiE Hyderabad and CEO & Co-Founder of getdomestichelp()com

This budget is one of the most positive budgets for startups and we are delighted to see some very encouraging announcements promoting entrepreneurship in the country. On one side setting up of Rs. 10,000 crores VC fund will enhance the capital inflow to new startups & SMEs while on the other hand new national accelerators and incubators will boost innovation. 5 new IITs and 5 new IIMs will also result in more enterprising startups mushrooming in the country. It is also encouraging to see that the government is taking steps to spread the seed of entrepreneurship beyond the urban areas by allocating Rs. 100 Crore for Startup Village entrepreneurship for rural population and Rs 14, 389 crore for ‘Skill India’ program.