The annual exercise by DPIIT assesses performance of States and Union Territories across seven reform areas.
Karnataka has emerged as one of the best performers in the fourth edition of the States’ Start-up Ranking, a yearly capacity building exercise by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). The other best performers include Gujarat, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu.
This is the fourth consecutive year that Karnataka has bagged the top honour. The exercise was launched in 2018. The results were announced by Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on National Start-up day on Tuesday.
The exercise assesses the performance of States and Union Territories across seven reform areas divided into 25 action points. The seven reform areas include institutional support, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, access to market, incubation and mentorship support, funding support, capacity building of enablers and roadmap to sustainable future.
The ‘best performer’ title is awarded to States and Union Territories with model State start-up ecosystems that could be benchmark for other States to follow. While the Bengaluru, the State capital, also adorns the title of ‘India’s start-up capital’, there has been push from the government and other ecosystem players to encourage more start-up clusters in the State under ‘Beyond Bengaluru’. Mysuru, Hubbali, and Mangaluru have seen some of these emerging clusters.
The Karnataka government has also introduced schemes like the ELEVATE programme which offers up to ₹50 lakh for innovative early stage start-ups for no equity in return and the ELEVATE – Unnati programme for start-ups with founders from SC/ST communities. The government also recently introduced preferential market access for start-ups registered in the State.
source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)