STATE’S STARTUP RANKING 2021

The third edition of Ranking of States on “Support to Startup Ecosystems” was released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Earlier, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry released an Ease of Doing Business Ranking, which is based on the Business Reforms Action Plan report 2020.

State startup ranking

The Start-up India initiative of the Government of India envisages building a robust Start-up ecosystem in the country for nurturing innovation and providing huge opportunities to budding entrepreneurs.

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has been formulating the States’ Start-up Ranking Exercise since 2018.

The assessment plays a crucial role in easing the business environment for start-ups in the country.

Objectives

• It helps to bring fore progress made by the States/ UTs for promoting the Startup ecosystem.
• It fosters competitiveness & propels the States and UT to work proactively.
• It facilitates States/ UTs to identify, learn and replicate good practices.

Classification - States / Union Territories are classified into 5 Categories:

• Best Performers
• Top Performers
• Leaders
• Aspiring Leaders
• Emerging Start-up Ecosystems

How about the Rankings 2021?

The participants were evaluated across 7 broad Reform Areas which is consisting of 26 Action Points ranging from Institutional Support, Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Access to Market, Incubation support, Funding Support, and Mentorship Support to Capacity Building of Enablers.

Result:

• Gujarat and Karnataka were selected as the Best Performers in the States category.
• Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa, and Telangana have won the Top Performers award among states category
• Jammu and Kashmir appeared as the Top Performer among UTs.

About Startup India Program

• It was introduced in 2016 as a call to innovators, entrepreneurs, and thinkers of the country to lead from the front in driving India’s sustainable growth and creating huge employment opportunities.
• The entrepreneurial portal had more than 65,000 startups registered, of which 40 attained unicorn status recently, bringing the total as of date to 90 unicorns.
• India is ranked third among the global startup ecosystem.

Challenges associated with startup initiative

• The underrepresentation of women and marginalized caste groups in the national startup ecosystem is one of the major challenges associated with startup initiatives due to multiple factors such as caste-based economic exclusion, urban-rural divide, and lack of access to quality education.
• Entrepreneurship continued to be highly concentrated in three megacities, namely, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi NCR. The concentration can lead to increased economic inequality.
• Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes’ share in the ownership of agricultural establishments including farming, livestock, and fishery were higher in comparison to the non-agricultural establishment.

The government initiated a Stand-Up India scheme to encourage entrepreneurial ships by facilitating bank loans between 10 lakh and 1 crore to at least one schedule caste or schedule tribe and at least one woman per bank branch for setting up non -agriculture enterprise.