Encouraged by the central government's wave of Startup India in the entire country, the Haryana government yesterday announced that it has carved out its own draft policy which aims to transform the state into a startup hub by providing support to entrepreneurial talents and new-age innovators present in the state. By preparing a draft policy of its own, Haryana has joined the list of several other Indian states that have drafted their own startup policies to encourage entrepreneurship and businesses in their region. (Read Here)

According to an official spokesperson for the Haryana government, the policy drafted by the government will be facilitating a minimum venture capital funding of Rs 200 crore, and encourage and incubate at least 500 startups based out of the state.

During the policy period, the government plans to garner investments to the tune of Rs 500 crore for the incubation and startup ecosystem of the state.

The government's has planned to achieve this goal by building a sustainable ecosystem of engineering, innovation, and research and development, one which results in aligning the state with the central government's much ambitious and extremely popular Startup India initiative.

For the uninitiated, launched a year ago in January by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Startup India initiative by the central government aims at celebrating and encouraging the young entrepreneurship spirit, who are making use of technology for solving problems across various industries and sectors, right from education to environment, sports and medicine, to name a few.

In order to create the startup ecosystem in the state, the Haryana government is also planning to enhance the links between universities, research institutions and the state's business community. Encouraging young minds towards entrepreneurship and innovation at a young age can help the state in becoming an envious talent pool in the coming few years.

According to the government's spokesman, there is currently a proposal on the state government's table to create an IT startup hub in Gurgaon/Gurugram and start at least 10 technology, business incubators or accelerators in different regions of the state.

The government aims to have incubation centres in all parts of the state, and develop one million square feet of incubation space, all with Indian the duration of the policy.

The spokesman highlighted that according to the state government's draft policy, it would be recognising a business as a startup if the entity is registered in Haryana not prior to five years and has an annual turnover not exceeding Rs 25 crore.

In addition to this, the startup should be working towards innovation, development, deployment or commercialisation of new products, processes or services driven by technology or intellectual property.

All the applications received under the policy will be meticulously examined by a committee headed by the principal secretary or secretary of the Industries Department.

The startups shortlisted by the committee will then be required to get a certification from Policy Implementation Committee. After all of this is done, they will be eligible for all the financial incentives listed in the policy.

According to the government's spokesman, the pillars of the Haryana government's draft policy will be fiscal support, fund of fund creation, infrastructure augmentation, student entrepreneurship and regulatory support.

Under fiscal support, the state government is planning to provide fiscal incentives to incubators. This includes reimbursement for recurring expenses, exemption on stamp duty and registration, and capital subsidy.

Under infrastructure augmentation, the government has plans of building a 10,000 square feet warehouse, a 4,000 square feet mobile application centre and a centre for innovation and entrepreneurship in the millennium city, Gurgaon.

The Fund of fund component of the draft policy will cater to providing funding to support startups and a huge corpus of Rs 200 crore will be created for the same.

According to the government's spokesman, the selected startups will also be given interest, lease rental and innovation promotion subsidies, and incentives and provisions under the Enterprises Promotion Policy-2015.

The Haryana government seems to have chalked out an excellent plan to make the whole of Haryana at par with other startup hubs in the Indian subcontinent. Let's see if they're able to execute the plan as they intend to.
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