NITI Aayog, Government of India’s newly formed think tank, will fund 80 incubation centers across the country. This funding exercise will be part of the second phase of Startup India Programme that was announced earlier this year.
This information was disclosed in the lower house on Monday by C R Chaudhary. Mr Chaudhary said that Startup India hub has so far mentored more than 550 startups, 2,20,000 startups have been registered and nearly one lakh queries have been successfully handled.
In the first funding phase, NITI Aayog had selected only 19 incubation centers. The names of 80 incubation centers that will be funded in the second phase have still not been made official. However, it is confirmed that Atal Incubation Centres and Established Incubation Centres (EICs) will be receiving funds in the second phase.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the Startup India and Standup India initiative on Independence Day in 2015. The initiative was officially launched by former Finance Minister Arun Jaitely on January 2016. The aim of this initiative was to encourage and foster Indian startup ecosystem by giving them various tax concessions and simplifying several policies & procedures.
Some of the salient features of Startup India and Standup India are as follows:
- No tax for first 3 years of operation
- 80% patent registration fees
- Bankruptcy Code to ensure faster winding up of startups
- Self-certification compliance
