Ramesh Abhishek, the Enemy of Start up India!

What is ailing the new India? Actually, many things, but if you talk of the young and aspiring, entrepreneurial generation, it is the dampened atmosphere in the field of Start-up India that was announced by Mr Narendra Modi with much fanfare after he first became PM more than five years ago.

The Startup India initiative was launched with a clear objective of scaling up entrepreneurship and innovation in India with a vision to create more job opportunities in the emerging Indian economy and wealth in the hands of young stakeholders. 

Startup India was introduced to capture the imagination of young Indians, inspiring many to dream of being an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, this initiative failed to do what it promised.

The primary reason is, it was handed over to a bad and retiring candidate called Ramesh Abhishek, a controversial IAS officer of the 1982 batch of the Bihar cadre. He was made Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), a department which handles start-ups under the Union Ministry of Commerce.

No Start-up can thrive without adequate funding and therefore any Start-up ecosystem needs to be built around investors/ financiers willing to provide capital to Start-ups. As reported in the media, while a ‘fund of funds’ of Rs.10,000 crores to support innovation, driven Start-ups had been established to be managed by the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), mere Rs.1561 crores (less than 16% in last 3 years) have been distributed to Start-ups.

With his incompetent leadership, Ramesh Abhishek has not been able to do any justice to this role, and, as a result, bureaucrats like him are playing a key role in blocking the Indian start-ups by taking the country back to the days of the license raj.

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