Latest News | Indian Investors Need to Play Greater Role in Providing Funds to Domestic Start-ups: Goyal

New Delhi, Jul 20 (PTI) Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday called upon Indian investors to play a greater role in providing funds to domestic start-ups with a view to promote the growth of budding entrepreneurs.

He said the government has taken several initiatives to strengthen the start-up ecosystem in the country and more needs to be done to further promote ease of doing business for them.

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"In fact personally, I feel our Indian investors need to play a much more important role in providing funds to our start-ups. Most of our high quality successful good start-ups are getting sold to foreign companies and the risk taking ability in India needs to be promoted a lot more to support our start-up ecosystem," he said while addressing a webinar on start-ups.

The minister expressed confidence that once investors recognise the "great role" of start-ups in strengthening women entrepreneurship, boosting self reliant India campaign, promoting innovation, they would participate.

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Goyal also said that start-ups are going to play an important role in the post-Covid world.

The government has the responsibility of making things easier for start-ups, hand holding them with easier compliance and exit processes, he said, adding that these measures will help the start-up ecosystem "take wings".

"I noted that there are still some more initiatives that need to be done for ease of doing business, for ensuring greater degree of participation of banks and lenders to the start-up ecosystem," he said.

Participating in the webinar, IT industry veteran T V Mohandas Pai suggested a few points for consideration of the government to promote start-ups.

He suggested a Rs 50,000 crore 'Aatmanirbhar' programme for start-ups and reduction of barriers for private investments into start-ups.

"Even for gold. For example, why should India import gold, we got 30,000 tonnes of gold, gold price globally is very high, why can't India sell that gold and re-invest," he suggested.

On this suggestion, Goyal said "we were all struggling to work out a gold monetisation scheme which works but we have not got anything viable" wherein people get a return on "dead" gold while protecting its value.

On a suggestion to reinstate tax benefits for special economic zones, he said "I do not think I may be able to manage that, it's beyond my remit".

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)