MANISH GUPTA
Ranchi, July 15: The Jharkhand government may sound excited about its plans to revive the startup ecosystem in the state, the existing startups have lost all faith as they see many of their contemporaries closing shop even before trying out their certified ideas.
“Jharkhand government had certified 107 startups during the previous government. Out of that, about 40 startups have already closed down at the initial stage itself,” Rathin Bhadra, President of Indian Start-up Association (ISUA), told lagatar24.com.
Bhadra said that the startup ecosystem in the state has completely collapsed and the situation has been bad under both the previous and the current governments. Only 15 out 107 startups had received paltry amounts in the name of funding till 2019.
“Someone who is expecting Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh funding, what help Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh will do? And, even that was given to about 15 startups only. We never got any incubation support and other incentives outlined in the startup policy,” Bhadra said.
While the startup entrepreneurs consider Jharkhand Startup Policy 2016, which expired in September 2021, to be the best in India, they are extremely irritated with its execution and have no hope that the state government will come out with the next policy soon.
Jharkhand Information Technology Secretary Kripa Nand Jha had recently said that the new policy will be announced by the end of July and, before that, the IT department will sign an MoU with XLRI Jamshedpur to strengthen the startup ecosystem in the state.
“I don’t see it happening soon. Each time a new department will put some query and it will keep hanging. There are 10-12 departments that have to give their clearance and each will take about three months,” said ISUA Vice President Ravi Ranjan Singh.
Singh had left his job in the IT sector to begin his startup. His startup was certified in December 2018 and, by March 2019, the initial funding even reached the state treasury but then it kept hanging there and by the end of the year the government changed.
“The new government started talking about a new policy and the entire team of Atal Bihari Vajpayee Innovation Lab (ABVIL) was sent back. I finally gave up in 2021 after struggling for three years and took up a job for the survival of the family,” Singh said.
However, Singh has taken up a job in Ranchi, unlike his partner, Vikas Kumar Sinha, who has taken up a job in Chandigarh, in the hope that something may turn up and he is around to give shape to his dream. Both Singh and Sinha are in their mid-30s.
ISUA President Bhadra says while in the previous government, the political bosses had the zeal but the officers were no support; under the current government, officers want to make it happen for the startups but the government has been holding them back.
