Patna: The state industries department has received over 30 startup proposals on October 24 evening after launching a website — www.biharstartupyatra.com — for inviting people interested in setting up ventures with government support.
The proposals received so far include ideas for setting up pearl-farming, audiovisual editing centre and food-packaging units. “The proposals have come from people having +2 to PhD degrees.
The idea is to promote entrepreneurship right from the grassroots level,” Industries Department Principal Secretary S Siddharth told.
Siddharth said the first lot of startup ventures would be selected after Chhath. The selected ones would be given Rs10 lakh each as seed money (the initial capital to start a business) and a common office space.
“Setting up a website for submission of proposals is one of the mandatory provisions under the Bihar Startup Policy, 2016. Accordingly, we launched a user-friendly website on Sunday. The proposals selected through the website would be allotted incubation space, a mentor and seed funds as well,” said Siddharth. The startup policy was approved by the state cabinet on September 6.
Besides, the state government has also pledged a corpus of Rs 500 crore as venture capital under seven resolves of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. A venture capital is a form of financing which is provided to small and emerging firms with high growth potential.
Siddharth said a trust would also be launched soon. “The state’s startup policy includes a provision for creation of a startup trust. It will comprise a committee of business experts and bureaucrats, which will screen and select business ideas for giving seed capital. The trust will be the custodian of seed funds and will monitor the startups as well,” he said.
“We are soon going to ask information technology department to hand over its office space at Biscomaun Bhawan to us, so that we could develop an incubation centre for budding entrepreneurs. The idea behind incubation centre is to provide the minimum office infrastructure, including office space, the internet facility and other forms of support,” he said.
At present, there is one incubation centre at the Bihar Industries Association (BIA) office in Patna. Started in November last year, the centre has enrolled five startups for guidance and provided them office space. The businesses deal in online grocery orders, delivery of medicines, a shoe laundry service, mobile food van and biogas-based energy generation for rural areas.
Source: Times of India
Image Courtesy: mybigplunge
