Budget 2016: This is what startups are expecting. Are you listening, Arun Jaitley?

2015 has been a momentous occasion for the burgeoning Indian startups, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Startup India initiative was the icing on the cake.

With policies devised especially keeping the need of startups in mind and with aid from founders of startups themselves, it’s a given that they should be happy and content at the moment.

However, that’s not the case.

This could be blamed on the fact that a few of the policies announced at the Startup India event were quite ambiguous, not to forget generic.
Thus, founders have some additional expectations from Arun Jaitley’s Budget 2016 so that their demands relating to their personal sectors are more or less met.

According to Rajiv Sharma, MD and co-founder of dPronto, a last-mile delivery and logistics company that was in the new for typing up with e-commerce giant Flipkart, the need of the hour is adequate budget resources allocated for the social sector.

“While it is important to boost the confidence to global investors by way of structural reforms and find a way to achieve the fiscal deficit target of 3.5 per cent in FY17, there shoudl also be high focus on inclusive growth and adequate measures to ensure upliftment of the rural sector, creation of more employment opportunities, and enriching the lives of women, children, senior citizens and people below the poverty line,” he believes.

However, for Varun Dua, CEO and co-founder of Coverfox, a one of a kind online insurance portal, the key priority remains in deregulation and allowing FDI in fintech. “Most fintech businesses like payment banks / insurance have heavy dependence on domestic capital which is mostly risk averse and thus scarce.”

The Budget should also consider relaxation in structures which make private secondary transactions more liquid from a tax or complication perspective, Dua adds.

Then, there’s Pankaj Vermani, the CEO of Clovia, an e-commerce website which focuses on lingerie, who believes that it should be seen that the boom experienced by the e-commerce industry in 2015 should continue, at any cost.

“To ensure that the growth continues the Union budget needs to provide greater tax clarity especially related to jurisdiction / taxability issues. We are also hoping for a positive clarification for the Central Sales tax on transactions such as cash on delivery, which involve inter-state movement of goods.In addition, today every region has different laws for eCommerce. To govern the sector better one needs better definition of the category and a centralized law," he signs off.

Image credit: Indiatimes