Revenue and Information-Technology (IT) Minister Rohan Khaunte’s announcement that Goa will soon have a start-up policy has emerged as the most crucial announcement, from industry’s perspective, of the newly-formed State government.
But, before we go any further, the context needs to be understood. It’s no secret that a number of start-ups have mushroomed in Goa in the last five years, but, that’s mostly due to the initiative of people behind these start-ups, as they survived despite many challenges.
And, the challenges, or rather the headwinds, are many. Although, there are incubation centres in the State, most start-ups still don’t get enough mentoring. Even those who start from incubation centres struggle to find commercial space, once they are out of such centres.
Most start-ups survive on savings of promoters, or of their family members or their friends, because there is very little investors’ interest in start-ups in Goa and funding from government is also very little.
Clearly, it is tough to be a start-up company in Goa. That’s the reason, the expectations are that the start-up policy will address these concerns. But, practically speaking, which problems of start-ups a government policy can address?
For starters, a lot of fine-tuning of existing policies will be required. The state government has schemes for promoting businesses, but some of the policy provisions are out-of-tune with reality of young start-ups.
For example, EDC provides loans to really small businesses under Chief Minister’s Rojgar Yojana (CMRY) scheme, but it requires 15 years of permanent residence in the area by the applicant.
Jason Fernandes, founder, SmartKlock Inc, said, “The EDC CMRY scheme is one example of an excellent scheme marred by a 15-year Goa residency requirement, which is at odds with the government’s stated aim to reverse brain drain and to attract IT talent to return to Goa.”
In modern day, where tech start-ups like Facebook have become billion dollar enterprise within a few years of coming into existence, rules like 15 years residence in Goa is too long and impractical. It will prevent a number of eligible start-ups from getting government funding.
Apart from funding, the other key area, where start-ups require a lot of hand holding is mentoring. CIBA (Centre for Incubation and Business Acceleration) runs two incubation centres in Goa - one in Verna and the other in Assagao.
Venugopal TR, incubation manager, CIBA-Verna, said, “We have a team of 16 members in this incubation centre. Some of us mentor the start-ups. Besides, we even get mentors from industry to impart training to the start-ups.”
When it comes to mentor-ship, it is extremely important that people, who train the start-ups, have experience in the related field themselves. Venugopal continued, “Even in our core 16 member team, people have experience in entrepreneurship. In fact, I have also experience in running a business.”
He continued, “We also try to ensure that the start-ups add to Goan economy by creating jobs for local people. We end up making it easy for them to get talent by advising where to get right kind of people from.”
In a knowledge industry, talent acquisition is often a challenge. In such a case, an incubation centre or any kind of government run support system can help young start-ups by just advising them where to hire people from, which institutes to go to, or by just creating a database of qualified people seeking employment.
Helping create a pool of talented people for start-ups and ensuring that start-ups end up reaching out to this pool will only help in creating more jobs for locals, which is the stated objective of all policies the government has for industrial promotion.
Other problem start-ups face is number of approvals they have to take from the government. Now, this is not a new problem in Goa, as other industries too have pointed it out several times.
Fernandes said, “I believe this could be fixed by implementation of a single window system that somehow incorporates panchayat approvals as well.”
A single-window-clearance system will help start-ups save a lot of time, which is usually spent on running behind various government departments in getting approvals. In fact, it may just be a good idea to set up a centre, which advises start-ups on what all government approvals are required. This is because often start-ups don’t know about such things.
Simply put, start-ups face three huge challenges “ getting land or space to set up office, getting right kind of people to employ and getting all necessary government approvals.
As of now, Goa has few incubation centres, but after spending initial years there, companies find it hard to find space outside. The start-up policy will have to address this issue. A source even said, “Some incubation centres haven’t clicked. If not for incubation centres, where should Goan start-ups be going?”
Most IT sources agree that start-ups should be encouraged all across Goa, not in one particular place or a spot. In short, a culture of good infrastructure and easy to follow policies should be encouraged all across the state for the sake of start-ups.
As for getting talent, the government already has employment exchange, where people seeking jobs go and register. Such resources must be channelized. When it comes to approvals, a one-stop department, which will tell start-ups how to go about approvals will work.
In many ways, solutions to many problems start-ups face exist even today. What is required from a start-up policy is to bring everything under one policy and framework so that conducive atmosphere can be created for young, budding ideas.
