Karnataka – A Destination for Startups:
The causes that have led to Karnataka being a destination for start-ups are:
- Various policy measures that are being introduced to promote entrepreneurs and attract early-stage investment.
- Presence of startup accelerators.
- Presence of cloud and mobile technologies that helps reduce the cost of doing business.
- Proposal to set up a start-up fund and Hack-Cellerator.
- Proposal for setting up startup warehouse NextGen which will house and integrate India’s first Hack-celerator, a unique combination of a hackathon and an accelerator.
- Proposal for setting up a tech startups incubation program.
Tech Startups Incubation Program:
- The Government has proposed the setting up of a 1000 crore “techno-financial incubation and facilitation program” called the Self Employment and Talent Utilisation (SETU).
- This would act as a techno-financial incubation and facilitation program to support all aspects of start up business and other self employment activities particularly in the technology driven areas.
- It aimed to address concerns such as more liberal system of raising global capital, incubation facilities in our centres of excellence, funding for seed capital and the ease of doing business need to be addressed to create a lakh jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in value
Issues:
Clash with brick and mortar companies:
- Brick-and-mortar retailers of electronics and hardware in the state have seen nearly 50-60 per cent decline in business due to the steep discounts and “predatory pricing” by online sellers.
- Brick and mortar companies are alleging that e-commerce firms have undue advantage as their costs are minimal, pay lower taxes even while they don’t generate jobs for local people.
- According to them all the funds that these online retailers are raising is being spent on supporting heavy discounts that they offer.