States' startup ecosystem ranking to be released on Friday

The rankings are based on the initiatives taken to develop the startup ecosystem for promoting budding entrepreneurs. "The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) conducted the second edition of the states' startup ranking exercise with the key objective to foster competitiveness and propel states and Union Territories to work proactively towards uplifting the startup ecosystem," the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in the statement.

The commerce ministry will release the second edition of ranking of states and union territories (UTs) based on their startup ecosystem tomorrow, an official statement said on Thursday. The rankings are based on the initiatives taken to develop the startup ecosystem for promoting budding entrepreneurs.

"The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) conducted the second edition of the states' startup ranking exercise with the key objective to foster competitiveness and propel states and Union Territories to work proactively towards uplifting the startup ecosystem," the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in the statement. The ranking framework 2019, it said, has 7 broad reform areas consisting of 30 action points ranging from institutional support, easing compliances, relaxation in public procurement norms, incubation centres, seed funding, venture funding, and awareness and outreach.

"To establish uniformity and ensure standardisation in the ranking process, States and UTs have been divided into two groups. While UTs except Delhi, and all States in North East India, except Assam are in one group, all other states are placed in the other group," the ministry added. A total of 22 states and 3 UTs have participated in the exercise.

The statement said that an evaluation committee composed of independent experts from the startup ecosystem, carried out a detailed assessment of responses across various parameters. Many parameters involved getting feedback from beneficiaries, which was gathered through more than 60,000 calls made in 11 different languages to empathetically connect with beneficiaries to ascertain the real pulse at the implementation levels, it added.

In the last 2018 edition of the ranking, Gujarat emerged as the best performer in developing the startup ecosystem for budding entrepreneurs. Other top performers that followed the western state were Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha and Rajasthan. The results of the second edition of the ranking will be released by Minister for Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Ravishankar Prasad in the presence of Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal.

The government had launched Startup India Action Plan in January 2016 to promote budding entrepreneurs in the country. The plan aims to give incentives such as tax holiday and inspector raj-free regime and capital gains tax exemption..