Piyush Goyal Announces Helpline for Startups to Lodge Their Complaints

The government will start a helpline desk for Indian start-ups in case they face any kind of issues or want to make suggestions to the government, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said on Saturday at the Startup Mahakumbh in New Delhi.

He said that the helpline will be open for every startup across the country to file any king of complaint or make suggestions to the government.

“Whenever any officer troubles you (startups) or if you want to make any suggestion regarding any changes in the laws or if you want to flag any product or technology which may not fall under the current legal boundaries of India, you will be able to reach out to that helpline,” he said.

The minister said the government will try to make that helpline available for as many Indian languages as possible.

Goyal emphasised the level of support that the government is providing to start-ups. He said that under the Rs 10,000 crore fund of funds of the Startup India scheme, each start-up has been given about Rs 20 crore on average.

He said that big investors sometime ignore the small funding needs of start-ups while some “super smart savvy” investors buy huge equity through a small amount.

“I have come across cases in which a founder had to sell almost half of the stake to investors. By the time the company gets successful, the founder was left with a very small amount of equity in the company,” he said.

Keeping this in mind, the government has approved the second round of the fund of funds, which will be again of Rs 10,000 crore. This time, Goyal said, some amount of the fund will be earmarked for small start-ups to fulfil their seed funding needs. He said the first tranche of Rs 2000 crore of this fund will be given to SIDBI this year.

He said that India has a lot of potential which is to be unlocked yet hence the country needs to aim big. “We aspire to make our own AI model, to make our own machines. We want to be seen as a high quality and high skill nation in the world.”