National Startup Advisory Council

NSAC UPSC: Relevance

• GS 2: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

National Startup Advisory Council: Context

• Recently, Ministry of Commerce & Industry has chaired the 4th meeting of National Startup Advisory Council (NSAC) in New Delhi.

National Startup Advisory Council: Key points

• The Council deliberated upon important matters relating to startup ecosystem including protecting ownership of startups with original promoters, incorporating in India, listing in India, developing innovation hubs, etc.
• The members also shared progress on programs presented in earlier NSAC meetings including National Mentorship Program, Investor-Startup Matchmaking Portal, Incubator Capacity Development Program, etc.
• Members of the council have also been visiting states and interacting with startup entrepreneurs and students in educational institutions to understand and find ways to energize the startup ecosystem.

About National Start Advisory Council

• Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) had constituted the National Startup Advisory Council to advise the Government on measures needed to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation and startups in the country to drive sustainable economic growth and generate large scale employment opportunities.
• Besides the ex-officio members, the council has non-official members, representing various stakeholders such as founders of successful startups, veterans who have grown and scaled companies in India, representatives of industry associations, among others.

NavIC Grand Challenge

• The Ministry has also launched NavIC Grand Challenge which aims at promoting adoption of NavIC as geo-positioning solution, a key proponent for digital Aatmanirbharta.
• The applications for the grand challenge are open on Startup India’s website and it aims to identify and handhold solutions of startups which are engaged in developing NavIC enabled drones.

Government initiatives to promote startups

• Startup India Action Plan: An Action Plan for Startup India was unveiled in 2016. The Action Plan laid the foundation of Government support, schemes and incentives envisaged to create a vibrant startup ecosystem in the country.
• Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS: The Scheme aims to provide financial assistance to startups for proof of concept, prototype development, product trials, market entry and commercialization. Rs. 945 crore has been sanctioned under the SISFS Scheme for period of 4 years starting from 2021-22. It will support an estimated 3,600 entrepreneurs through 300 incubators in the next 4 years.
• Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) Scheme: The Government has established FFS with corpus of Rs. 10,000 crore, to meet the funding needs of startups. DPIIT is the monitoring agency and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) is the operating agency for FFS. It has not only made capital available for startups at early stage, seed stage and growth stage but also played a catalytic role in terms of facilitating raising of domestic capital, reducing dependence on foreign capital and encouraging home grown and new venture capital funds.
• Startup India Hub: The Government launched a Startup India Online Hub in 2017, which is one of its kind online platforms for all stakeholders of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India to discover, connect and engage with each other.
• National Startup Awards: National Startup Awards is an initiative to recognize and reward outstanding startups and ecosystem enablers that are building innovative products or solutions and scalable enterprises, with high potential of employment generation or wealth creation, demonstrating measurable social impact.
• International Access to Indian Startups: One of the key objectives under the Startup India initiative is to help connect Indian startup ecosystem to global startup ecosystems through various engagement models. This has been done though international Government to Government partnerships, participation in international forums and hosting of global events.
• Support for Intellectual Property Protection: The Government launched Start-ups Intellectual Property Protection (SIPP) which facilitates the startups to file applications for patents, designs and trademarks through registered facilitators in appropriate IP offices by paying only the statutory fees. The Government bears the entire fees of the facilitators for any number of patents, trademark or designs, and startups only bear the cost of the statutory fees payable. Startups are provided with an 80% rebate in filing of patents and 50% rebate in filling of trademark vis-a-vis other companies.
• Faster Exit for Startups: Ministry of Corporate A­ffairs has notified Startups as ‘fast track firms’ enabling them to wind up operations within 90 days vis-a-vis 180 days for other companies.

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