Gurgaon: The chief minister announced on Saturday Haryana’s golden jubilee year would be one of development and job creation and appeared determined to walk the talk by setting up a Rs 1,000-crore corpus for the industry sector, particularly medium and small-scale enterprises (MSME).
He also said that in line with his government’s focus on startups, entrepreneurs would will be given collateral-free loans up to Rs 1 crore.
“We will focus on development and providing employment opportunities during the golden jubilee year and efforts will be made to provide employment to 2 lakh unemployed youths through entrepreneurs besides giving Rs 9,000 as supporting allowance to postgraduates who do not have a job. They will be provided 100 working hours from November 1 this year,” he said at an event organised by the Bombay Stock Exchange. “The government wishes to empower industries through easier finance and funding options,” he added.
The CM’s words generated huge interest in the city, which is a leading start-up hub. Sandeep Aggarwal, founder of Shopclues, said, “If we list the most important things for the success of a startup, the first six would be capital. In such a scenario, it is important that entrepreneurs have access to affordable capital. The cost of capital in India is 16% as opposed to 2% in the US and 3-4 % in China. The startup fund is a welcome move. But the government should match the pace of its talk with the walk.”
Rajesh Sawhney, founder of GSF accelerator and Innerchef, said more clarity is required on which sector will be the focus for the government’s funds. “Also, how soon the funds reach the entrepreneur,” he said.
Rajat Tandon, vice-president at Nasscom’s 10,000 Startups, said, “We welcome the announcement. Gurgaon has the potential to be the startup hub of North India. It would be nice to understand the sectors the fund will be deployed in.”
OYO Rooms founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal also greeted the announcement with enthusiasm, saying it would add further momentum to developing startup hubs across many parts of the country. “This is a progressive step which we welcome whole-heartedly,” he said.
In his talk at the BSE, the CM also mentioned that the state government has adopted the cluster approach to give a big push to the MSME sector in the state and 19 different clusters had been developed. “Haryana has a lot of potential given the number of MSME ventures in the state. However, of the 140 companies listed on BSE SME, only three are from Haryana unlike states like Gujarat,” said a BSE spokesperson.
BSE, with the help of state government, will educate the MSME about the benefits of listing and how it can help them bring down the rate of interest on their loans by proper maintenance of books of account.
Source from: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/gurgaon/Haryana-to-give-startups-collateral-free-loan-up-to-Rs-1cr-CM-Manohar-Lal-Khattar/articleshow/54385162.cms