Assam to give more support to start-ups: CM Himanta Biswa

Guwahati: Leaders, administrators and successful start-ups stressed the need to improve infrastructure to help the nascent start-up ecosystem in Assam to its full potential.

The interactive session that took place on March 10 in Guwahati discussed the issues and challenges in the ecosystem in Assam. It was also mentioned that during the last few years, the Assam government had taken several measures to improve and enable the ecosystem to promote the start-ups in Assam, including establishing incubation centres in colleges, universities and other places.

To address the issue of funding, CM Sarma said he discussed the issue with the Small Industries Development Bank of India to set up a corpus fund to promote and support start-up initiatives in Assam.

Samir Sinha, Principal Secretary to Govt. of Assam, said they would note all responses from start-up representatives, and then, the state and central government can respond accordingly.

Roshan Farhan, CEO and Founder, Gobillion, said that the biggest problem is the fund to start up and get permission which needs lots of papers and documents.

Union Minister of Finance and Commerce Nirmala Sitharaman requested the state government to encourage start-ups to think differently citing the example of Karnataka, which set up hubs for start-ups in Tier 2 & 3 cities. This solved many problems thanks to the innovative ideas of the local people, she said.

She also sought advice and support from the Assam government and requested state government to give a framework so that she can obtain funds from NITI Aayog which can be used for providing lab assistance to different schools at the bottom level. She also emphasized that IIT Guwahati needs to be the hub of innovation for testing ideas by sharing spaces. In this regard, she advised taking suggestions from IIT Madras. She also requested that IIT Guwahati can, at least once a month, bring someone from the incubation centre of IIT Madras and exchange views and take suggestions.