Most of them agreed that a proper planning to smoothen up traffic on the roads besides improving the process of filing for an exit, bankruptcy and other issues should be the core agenda of the government.
What troubles Bangaloreans the most? No prizes for guessing! Poor infrastructure and incessant traffic snarls. Almost a week before Karnataka goes to polls, Moneycontrol spoke to some local startups and investors about their demands from the government.
Most of them agreed that a proper planning to smoothen up traffic on the roads besides improving the process of filing for an exit, bankruptcy and other issues should be the core agenda of the government.
“I think infrastructure planning of the city needs to be highly advanced. Unfortunately, it is not the case. We can gain a lot of productivity in the city by having the futuristic view of the infrastructure. Any government who comes in can look at the overall growth of Karnataka and at the same time should have a far-fetched infrastructure plan for the city of Bangalore. Anything which creates new avenues for an entrepreneur to set up shop is very good for the economy. And it is a welcome step,” said Amuleek Bijral, Co-founder and CEO, Chaipoint.
Archit Gupta, founder and chief executive officer of ClearTax, stressed the need for value creation for startups. “Overall they can help in the process of company creation, exits, bankruptcy for the startups. These things affect the startup ecosystem and need definite involvement,” he said.
Gupta also stated that it would be very difficult for any place to prosper without a good infrastructure. Even though Bangalore is a metropolitan city, it has multiple challenges.
“I think far more can be done in the city in terms of transportation and congestion on the road. More fundamental efforts on public transport, roads, signaling, and better traffic. That continues to be number one demand of businessman and job creators,” he said.
Ahead of the election, the Congress party has come up with its manifesto for the state. The manifesto states that there will be a ‘startup subsidy’ of up to approximately Rs 1 crore for the startups. The subsidy would have a grant component of up to Rs 25 lakh and soft loan about Rs 75 lakh at the rate of 6 percent.
The Congress party’s manifesto also says, among one of the key IT sector initiatives that it will undertake, that Karnataka will house over 20,000 tech-based startups, including 6,000 product startups by 2020 through its Multi-Sector Startup Policy.
As per the manifesto, this will translate into 1.8 million job opportunities for the state. It goes on to say that the party will ‘increase’ the number of startups to 20,000, where about 5000 of them will be assisted by Venture Capital.
While talking about the issue of infrastructure, traffic, and productivity loss because of congestion, Alok Goyal, co-founder of Stellaris Venture Partners – an early-stage investor said, “We do believe that infrastructure is a continuous challenge. I think on one hand India’s entrepreneurial culture is so strong and the ecosystem is so vibrant that it is not like the entrepreneurial activity will not happen because of infrastructure or related issue. On the other hand, I do believe that better infrastructure actually does make people more productive. Thus it aches the ecosystem and resists positivity for the startups in Bangalore.”
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