February 22 2016, 14.29 PM IST || Pocket News Alert
New Delhi: Leading young entrepreneurs running successful start-ups while speaking at “Budget Aaj Tak” conclave on Monday urged Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to announce major tax breaks and financial incentives for new companies and bring in more transparency in the functioning of bureaucracy.
Taking part in the conclave, Raghav Verma, Co-Founder, Chaayos; Shantanu Deshpande, CEO and Co-Founder, Bombay Shaving Company; Nakul Khanna, Co-Founder, Instago; and Sarubhi Srivastava, Co-Founder, Innovision, said though there has been good improvement in easy of doing business, much more needs to be done to improve overall business and economic environment of the country.
Narrating their experiences while opening their start-up companies, all the found young entrepreneurs said they at some point of time of opening or setting up their companies had to pay bribes of senior and junior level officers to get their work done. “We need to create a more open and robust government licensing system to speed up government processes and clearances,” said Nakul Khanna, who has created a mobile application brining all taxi operators under one platform thus making travel cheaper and easy.
Similarly, Surabhi Srivastava, who has created IT suite to help blind do work as a normal person does, asked Mr. Jaitley to give tax breaks and financial incentives to new companies for a longer duration, particularly those involved in IT hardware and manufacturing, so that they can take benefit of government schemes.
Shantanu Deshpande, who has opened an online shaving firm, said for start-up companies the risk factor is always high, so in initial phase they should not be taxed and their employees be given special income tax benefits. Such initiatives would give further boost start-up sector in India, he added.
Similarly, Raghav Verma, who has created chain of boutique tea shops, said time has come for the license system to go. The government needs to ensure that start-ups get time to focus on innovations and create more jobs rather than sorting out government processes. All these factors were forcing young entrepreneurs to open their firms abroad rather than India, he noted.
Raghav Verma,Co-founder Chaayos,Shantanu Deshpande,CEO & Co-founder,Bombay Shaving Company, Surabhi Srivastava,Co-Founder innovision and Nakul Khanna,Co-founderInstago, at Budge
