PANAJI
Prajyot Mainkar, director, Androcid Media, said, “We expect the government to provide a rebate in patent filing in the Budget to new/established start-ups, which are less than 3 years old. This will encourage them to file patents so that their products are adequately protected from copyright/other infringements”.
Goa has more than 250 IT and ITeS (information technology enabled services) companies. A lot of them are small start-ups making innovative tech-based products. Often, such companies find filing patents not only cumbersome but also expensive because they have inadequate financial resources.
This exposes them to the risk of their products being copied by rivals, which will threaten their existence. This problem can be sorted if the government steps in by Continued from P1
giving concessions on patent filing cost.
Another issue which is plaguing IT companies is poor internet quality. GWave, which is state government’s initiative, is providing fibre optic internet to users. Fibre optic internet has much better speed and quality compared to copper-wire based broadband.
But, fibre-optic based internet is more expensive as it requires laying of cables for fresh connections, which in turn requires digging of roads.
Jervis Pereira, director, GITIC (Goa Information Technology Innovation Centre), said, “GWave should find smarter ways of delivering technology to people. One of them could be to create wi-fi zones in places like Panaji, Verna and other parts of Goa where population density is high. In such places, people can take routers from GWave and connect to internet, which wouldn’t require laying of more cables”.
The quality of internet connections provided by most service providers is so bad in Goa that a lot of IT companies have two connections so that they don’t entirely rely on one.
Amarsh Chaturvedi, founder, Transerve Technologies, said, “In the upcoming budget, we expect the state government will create a provision for capital investment on developing IT industry infrastructure, primarily high speed broadband networks”.
Start-up India campaign which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked of a three year income tax holiday for start-ups. Mainkar said, “The state government has not yet notified the tax holiday. We expect the government to make an announcement on the lines of notifying the same in the budget”.
