Budget a missed opportunity on supporting diversity: WE Hub CEO
Hyderabad: Even though the Budget announced a few schemes for startups like the tax holiday and capital gains exemption for investment by another year, the ECLGS credit scheme to provide collateral-free loans to stressed SMEs, and the emphasis on NariShakti, experts feel a lot more could have been announced for the ecosystem.
Stating that not much support has been provided for women entrepreneurs, WE Hub CEO Deepthi Ravula said, “With the emphasis on NariShakti, it looks like a missed opportunity on supporting inclusion and diversity. With the pandemic enabling more women to be part of the work force and entrepreneurship, the budget lacked support in terms of working capital, technology upgradation, and incentive to companies, MSMEs and startups for addition of female workforce.”
Ravula also added that the ecosystem was looking forward to interconnectivity of MSMEs platform – Udyam, e-Shram, NCS and Aseem portals – and believes that this will improve entrepreneurial opportunities and facilitate operability for MSMEs. “In light of the amazing value that startups have been able to bring over the past year, creating 80 unicorns, we hoped the Budget 2022 could have included additional perks for startups at the acceleration phase, including incentives and additional support when working in a Tier 2 or Tier 3 region,” she said.
Meanwhile, T-Hub CEO M Srinivas Rao termed the Budget as pragmatic, positive and committed to the startup sector. “The budget provides a major boost to the research and development segment and defence startups by announcing the launch of defence R&D for industry, startups and academia. The sector-specific announcements like fund to be facilitated through NABARD to finance for agriculture and rural startups, and promotion of drone as a service and giving new manufacturing companies with a concessional corporate tax rate of 15 per cent will further strengthen the startup ecosystem,” he said.
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