Start-ups: DPIIT to cut compliance time to 1 hour/month

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has proposed significant cut in the compliance time to just one hour per month for start-ups as part of measures to ease regulatory requirements for budding entrepreneurs, an official said.

The proposal is part of the Start-up India Vision 2024, prepared by the department to promote the growth of budding entrepreneurs.

Under this vision document, the department has also proposed several other measures such as facilities of debt financing, setting up of 500 new incubators and accelerators, creating innovation zones in urban local bodies, deployment of entire corpus of Rs 10,000 crore fund of funds, operationalise credit guarantee scheme, and establishment of a seed fund.

The department has floated a note seeking views of different ministries on this document.

Currently, start-ups comply with a plethora of requirements such as GST filings, tax returns and other local laws every month, the official said. Compliance to these processes takes a lot of time and cost.

Further, it has proposed providing work orders and pilot projects from the government, ranking of ministries and central public sector undertakings for their increased engagement with start-ups, and organising a global start-up event in the country.

Startup India is the flagship initiative of the government, launched in January 2016, which intends to build a strong ecosystem for the growth of start-ups, to drive sustainable economic growth and generate employment opportunities. The Startup India action plan provides tax and other incentives.

So far, over 24,000 start-ups have been recognised by the department. They are eligible for various tax incentives.