Friday, December 12, 2014: In light of the government scheme which evolved in 2008, the startup incubators in India had produced 69 enterprises, majority of which are still struggling because of dearth of opportunities. The scheme was originally made valid only till 2014, but later the government got it extended till 2017.
Lepeesh Parat, chief executive officer and managing director of Zesty Beanz Technologies Pvt. Ltd, one of these startups said, “What we need is an opportunity.” While the ongoing discussion up on how to go about the scheme, being held at conference room in the department of electronics and information technology (DEITY), among the government officials, Parat said, “The government should at least make a scheme to provide us with opportunities in the e-governance space, because it is very difficult for start-up companies like us to bid for government projects considering the requirements.”
Following the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s thrust on start-ups and e-governance in line with its larger Digital India initiative, DIETY has now set aside the old scheme. The department is now working on to the scheme to shape in a way to address the concerns raised by these start-ups.
The government is now planning to initiate the next version of TIDE termed as TIDE Plus, under which the number of incubation centres in higher education institutions like IITs and IIMs will be doubled. They’ll be given more money from Rs.100,000 million start up fund announced in July. DEITY has also appointed C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), Noida to identify the progress of TIDE, hence to push the scheme to the next level. R S Sharma, secretary at DEITY said, “Essentially, we are very confident that we will increase the funding for the innovation in the start-up. With Digital India coming in, we have assessed the scheme to take it to the next level.”
