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India to soon get ‘startup corridor’, will be under Science & Technology Ministry

India may soon get a ‘Startup Corridor’ to enable incubators to create a consortium that can share their specialised incubation service with startups. The government plans to create such a facility and provide financial support of Rs 5 crore to the consortium.

“We are in the process of coming up with ‘Startup Corridor’ and it would be soon implemented in next financial year,” HK Mittal, adviser and head of National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) said on the sidelines of Whatnext 2016, a startup event organised by icreate at Ahmedabad.

Explaining the concept of ‘Startup Corridor’, Mittal said since incubators do not have all the resources and expertise under one roof, incubating startups have to either compromise or approach different incubators and therefore end up spending more time during incubation.

Under the startup corridor, multi-disciplinary incubators will be able to create a consortium and approach the science and technology Ministry.

“If selected, they will receive Rs 5 crore funding as incentive. This arrangement will help startups that need multi-disciplinary incubation support and thus save time by accelerating their incubation. “It will also allow incubators to pool in their resources to incubate a startup,” Mittal said.

Startup Corridor will function under the science and technology ministry and NSTEDB will be the nodal agency to implement it. Mittal said the government has stepped up support to the startup ecosystem in the country as the budgetary allocation for NSTEDB has been increased to Rs 80 crore in 2016-17 from Rs 40 crore in the current fiscal.

NSTEDB also plans to hold a programme, National Initiative for Development and Harnessing Innovation, under the Startup India banner to further strengthen the startup ecosystem in the country.

Source: The Economic Times

Image Courtesy: techstory