The policy talks about creating a favourable IPR regime in the country so that the IPR can be registered domestically. This is indeed welcome. At the same time, for any licensing of IPR by the deep tech start ups, a tax exemption on the license fee may be considered on domestically registered patents to incentivise onshore IP creation and ownership.

ESOPs form an important part of the compensation and talent retention strategy at such start-ups. Given the longer road to commercialisation, deferring the tax on ESOPs to the point of sale may help bring in equity for employees.

Another aspect is on angel tax exemptions which today cover a select set of investors such as AIFs and investors from select jurisdictions. The list of such investors may be expanded for deep tech start-ups for a limited time frame considering the fact that they may find patrons amongst a different set of investors such as family offices etc.