India achieves landmark milestone, over 75000 startups recognised so far

Tags: Economy/Finance

Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles Piyush Goyal on August 3 announced that India has achieved a milestone, recognizing 75000 startups in the country.

Important facts

• Out of the total recognized startups, about 12% are established in IT Services, 9% in Healthcare and Life Sciences, 7% in Education, 5% in Professional and Commercial Services and 5% in Agriculture.

• So far, 7.46 lakh jobs have been created by the Indian startup ecosystem, an annual growth of 110 per cent in the last 6 years.

• About 49% of these startups are from Tier II and Tier III.

Present Status

• India is the third largest start-up ecosystem in the world after the US and China.

• 44 Indian start-ups have achieved unicorn status in 2021, taking the total number of unicorns to 83.

• Most unicorns are from the services sector.

• Some of the successful Indian unicorns include Lenskart, Cred, Meesho, PharmEasy, Lycius, Grofers, etc.

• Bangalore has been listed among 20 leading startup cities in the world in the 2019 Startup Genome Project Rankings.

Related Government Initiatives

• SETU (Self-Employment and Talent Utilization) Fund - Rs 1,000 crore has been allocated by the government for creating self-employment and new jobs opportunities mainly in the technology driven domain.

• Credit Guarantee Fund - It was launched by the Government of India to make available collateral-free credit to the micro and small enterprise sector.

• Fund of Funds for Start-ups (FFS) - Under the Startup India programme, the government set up a Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore to provide funding support for startups.

• Tax exemption - Tax exemption on capital gains tax, removal of angel tax, tax exemption for 3 years and tax exemption on investments above fair market value.

• MUDRA Scheme - Through this scheme, start-ups get loans from banks to establish and grow their business.