Mr. Pramod Saxena, Chairman Oxigen Services-

“The start-up India movement is set to boost country’s entrepreneurial spirit. Over the last 8 to 10 years many initiatives have come forward to uplift the start-up culture but with PM Modi’s encouragement, it is a matter of time where we’d be as impactful as Silicon Valley and others. We are in need of private enterprise of that scale that can promote these initiates like Silicon Valley.

The private equity generally rushes in one direction but for the country’s perspective this should be seen differently. The government initiative should be to promote all round entrepreneurial development in support to start-up ventures that comes from different diversified fields which is huge in numbers; especially when we talk about agriculture, food and clean energy. Also, banks are not taking position to support early stage projects hence only areas of interest to VCs/ PVT Equity are seeing growth in startup’s. If government ensures a frictionless access to early stage capital to young entrepreneurs, we will see many more startup’s in areas of priority for country’s overall development.

In the payment sector we have seen a lot of development and government support. There are lot of other sectors which are open and need entrepreneurial and equity support.”

Mr. Sanjay Krishna Goyal, CEO & Founder ACL Mobile –

“India is up for a startup revolution; with 3100 startups in 2014 the reports project the numbers to reach 11,500 by 2020. Tapping into this entrepreneurial gold mine gives form to innovation that can boost India’s economic prospects by creating jobs and wealth. The last decade has seen a boost in entrepreneurial activity because of significant amount of funding activities. But obstacles like costs, procedural complexities and delays still remain at large.

The new initiative focusing on startups is a welcome move. The government needs to create a favorable environment for small-ticket co-investments which can help early-stage entrepreneurs; consider matching investments for seed investments by central funding agencies. The government initiatives should focus on building a start up culture in the country by promoting all round entrepreneurial development and subsequently creating an eco-system for conducive growth of the startups. The movement must aim at reducing cost. This can be done by defining a startup, easing regulations and the procedures around the company registration process, and possibly exempting startups from direct and indirect taxes, at least in their initial years, to reduce cash outflows.”