• Gujarat, Karnataka, Meghalaya best performers
• Nagaland’s ‘Lockdown challenge’ recognised a ‘Best Practice’
Morung Express News
Dimapur | July 4
Two years after moving up from ‘Beginner’ to ‘Aspiring Leader,’ Nagaland has maintained the same status as per the ‘States’ Startup Ranking 2021’ released on July 3. The results of the 3rd Ranking of States on Support to Startup Ecosystems were released by Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday.
As per an official release, the States and Union Territories (UTs) were ranked as - Best Performers, Top Performers, Leaders, Aspiring Leaders and Emerging Start-up Ecosystems.
The States and UTs were divided into two categories: ‘Category- A’ comprising of big States including NCT of Delhi and Assam and the Category-B comprising of UTs, North-East (NE) States and Goa.
All-India Ranking
Among the Category A States, Gujarat and Karnataka were the ‘Best Performers’ while Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa and Telangana got the ‘Top Performers.’
Assam, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh were in the ‘Leaders’ slot while Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were declared as Aspiring Leaders.
Andhra Pradesh and Bihar were under ‘Emerging Start-up Ecosystems,’ the lowest rank among the Category-A States.
Meghalaya won the top honour among the States and UTs under Category-B.
Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh and Goa bagged the Leaders honour while Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Daman and Diu, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, Puducherry and Tripura were the ‘Aspiring Leaders.’
Mizoram and Ladakh occupied the ‘Emerging Start-up Ecosystem’ rank among the Category-B States and UTs.
Meanwhile, speaking on the occasion, Goyal said that ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) had the power to spawn thousands of start-ups and called for democratising the ONDC in the next five years.”
He suggested States align with neighbouring ones so as to learn from each other and asked the department to get more start-ups on the Government E-Marketplace (GeM), saying that now even the services had been brought under GeM.
Nagaland’s performance
Meanwhile, as per the State Specific Reports for each of the 31 participating entities, the Ministry noted that Nagaland had taken some ‘praiseworthy initiatives’ to support startup ecosystems.
These included introducing focused capacity building programme for women entrepreneurs and building a one-stop portal to access information for all startups.
More specifically, the ‘Lockdown Challenge 2020’ featured in the ‘Compendium of Best Practices’ outlining initiatives adopted by various States in the 7 Reform Areas used in the ranking: Institutional Support, Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Access to Market, Incubation Support, Funding Support, and Mentorship Support to Capacity Building of Enablers.
The Lockdown Challenge was to scout for innovative products and solutions from startups to fight COVID 19 and focussed on bringing together products and solutions to tackle the pandemic.
Overall, however, Nagaland’s performance in specific reforms areas was not up to the mark.
As per the State Specific Reports, Nagaland began the journey towards strengthening its startup ecosystem by showing active participation in 3 Action Points of the Startup Ranking Framework 2020 - Institutional Support, Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Capacity Building of Enablers.
However, it failed to score in four other reform areas: Access to Market, Incubation Support, Funding Support, and Mentorship Support.
For market access, the report suggested introducing policy measures providing relaxation to startups, to encourage startups to participate in public procurement as well as reserving certain percentage of the total procurement by the State Government Departments/State PSUs for startups.
For incubation support, it suggested setting up more incubators and explore possibility of virtual incubation with district-level reach.
Support to new incubators can be provided in the form of one-time capital assistance, 100% reimbursement of stamp duty and registration fee paid, power tariff subsidy, and 100 % reimbursement for electricity duty paid for 5 years on a continuous basis with power tariff subsidy, it said.
For funding support, the report called for financial assistance in the form subsidies, and loans for the first 3 years at minimum interest rate.
The report also recommended expanding the mentorship network to include experts from relevant sectors, including industry experts, corporates, investors and successful entrepreneurs.
The State may maintain a list of sector-wise registered mentors and this information could be available through the State startup portal, it added.
Startup Ranking
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Union Ministry of Commerce & Industry has been conducting the States’ Start-up Ranking Exercise since 2018 to “facilitate the ease of building a start-up and doing business across the country.”
It is also aimed at supporting states and UTs in developing their start-up ecosystem and learn from the best practices in each state and UT. The consideration period for the 3rd edition exercise was October 1, 2019 to July 31, 2021 and documentary evidence submitted was evaluated over a 6-month duration.
