Four major expectations for startups in Union Budget 2020

By Sandeep Aggarwal

"India’s startup ecosystem has come a long way in the last one decade, standing as the world’s third most robust ecosystem, after the US and China. We also rank third on the list of most number of unicorns, close to 25 at present as compared to only 2 in 2010. As India envision to become a USD 5 trillion economy, the startup ecosystem can play a highly instrumental role in helping India reach there by creating innovations, employment generation, and thus economic growth. However, to truly facilitate this, we expect the government’s proactive involvement during this budget. For instance, we expect them to provide startups with no capital-gain tax and no dividend, like how it is in Singapore, thus enabling companies funded by VCs to invest more in their R&D or founders to have great incentive. Secondly, we hope the government allows Indian companies to be listed directly in Foreign Stock Exchange without having to necessarily get listed in the country. Third, if we can have a single window for all the registrations like company incorporation, shop establishment, GST registration etc. along with the company registration, that will help save time, efforts, and money considerably. Fourth, while the government has made significant efforts in terms of winding down a company, we hope a shorter turnaround for this as well. Apart from these, repatriation of the money from our country to foreign investors should become easier. Further, it will be highly beneficial if the government can bring the 15 public sector banks and 5 financial institutions onboard the early-stage investment drive by facilitating a VC arm and allocating perhaps 200-500 million each to fund seed, pre-series A, or up to series A rounds for startups. The economic multiplier will be very large in terms of the returns it can generate, the employment opportunities that it can create, and the economic progress that it can deliver."

(The writer, Sandeep Aggarwal is the Founder & CEO of Droom - an online automobile marketplace)