Startups pin hopes on Budget

The Union Budget will be keenly watched by startups after the boost that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s schemes have given to aspiring entrepreneurs. A startup friendly tax regime, minimum interference, more liberal funding, easy access to capital and elimination of red tape are some of the items on the wish list of a range of startups for the forthcoming Budget.

Akhil Gupta, CEO & founder Bumper, a startup in the car care segment, said the government should ease the qualification of Angel money, give tax breaks and incentivisation to individual investors and waive off service tax for a period of three years.

Funtoot founder Rajeev Pathak, who says it is a struggle to find funding support from private funds for education and health, suggests that government creates a special venture fund for social sectors like education and healthcare which is massively challenged on quality of teachers in education and health care infrastructure.

Sidharth Gupta, co-founder, Treebo Hotels, is keen to see service tax relief offered to early stage start-ups “as young companies are not profitable for the first few years, so service tax and not income-tax tends to be a large burden.”

“Simplification of tax laws for startups operating in e-commerce, tax Incentives for employees working in small scale enterprises, policy framework on supporting startups going for an IPO, would be few of the things we are looking forward to in Budget 2016,” said Mukesh Singh, founder of ZopNow.

Sudarshan Purohit, co-founder of the home rental Zenify.in would like credit security bond from the government as security for an initial bank loan. The government needs to categorise the start-ups based on which all provision and taxes needs to re-structured,” he said.