New Delhi: As a part of pre-budget consultation with the industry stakeholders, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted a round table meeting on Friday with venture capitalists and private equity fund managers, who fund startups and entrepreneurs to help them in setting up a new business or developing a completely new product or service.
“Prime Minister sought suggestions towards improving the ease of doing business in India, attracting more capital and furthering the reform process in the country,” Prime Minister Office said in a statement.
Sharing the details of the meeting, an official said that the government has taken several initiatives to boost the ease of doing business in the country over the last seven years and discussions during today's meeting were also in the same line.
Officials said the Prime Minister appreciated the practical suggestions received from the representatives and assured them that his government was committed to working to resolve the issues and challenges highlighted by the industry leaders.
The meeting, which was also attended by the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her team, underscores how the Prime Minister has been personally interacting with the industry leaders to gather inputs ahead of the next budget.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to present the Union budget on February 1 next year.
In the meeting, Prime Minister Modi highlighted the innovation happening in the country at the grass-root level and the boost given to the startup ecosystem. He also discussed the flagship schemes such as the PM GatiShakti that will transform the infrastructure building in the country by pooling in all the information of the projects planned by the Central and State agencies in a single platform.
In order to boost innovation in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the Startup India scheme in his independence day speech in August 2015 and the scheme was formally launched in January next year.
Then finance minister Arun Jaitley had also announced a slew of relief measures, including tax breaks, in his budget speech for the startup sector in February 2016.
In a first of this kind of interaction with the Prime Minister, venture capitalists and private equity fund managers talked about the startup potential of the country and how it can be scaled up to attain a global scale.
While Prashant Prakash of Accel highlighted the opportunities available for agri-startups in the country, Rajan Anandan of Sequoia Capital talked about how India can become the global hub in the education sector by leveraging technology. India’s edtech startup Byju’s, which was founded in 2011, has already become a global education technology company with a valuation of over $21 billion.
Talking about the business climate and the economic reform process, Shantanu Nalavadi of Piramal Group praised the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).
Amit Dalmia of Blackstone said that India was among the best performing geographies for the fund globally while Vipul Roongta of HDFC Capital Advisors discussed the policy initiatives taken by the government for boosting the housing sector, particularly the affordable housing sector.
Officials said the industry representatives also discussed the opportunities in the energy sector as India is moving away from fossil fuels to renewable and clean energy sources.
“Industry leaders also gave inputs about areas like FinTech and Financial Management, Software as a Service (Saas) among other things,” they said.
The meeting was attended by Gopal Srinivasan of TVS Capitals, Munish Verma from Softbank, Sandeep Naik from General Atlantic, Srinivasan from Kotak Alternate Assets, Shantanu Nalavadi from India Resurgent, and Vineet Rai from the Aavishkar Group, among others.
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