AP’s new Innovation & Startup Policy at a glance

After the demarcation of Andhra Pradesh into two states, AP has established few start-up friendly projects to boost entrepreneurship in the state to become an entrepreneur’s hub in India. One good example of this is their new “Innovation & Startup Policy” for 2014-2020.  The main agenda is to create a world-class technology startup eco system through encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation to generate more employment in the state.

Main highlights of the policy:

• AP government through their Innovation & Startup Policy intends to create an ecosystem where every family will have one entrepreneur.
• The target that has been set till 30^th June, 2019 is-

1. To establish 100 Incubation Centers
2. To benefit 5,000 startups and companies through the incubators
3. To develop 1 million sq. Ft of incubation space
4. VC funding ofRs.1000 crore to be used for innovation purpose
5. To promote startup and technology friendly culture
6. And lastly, to create a minimum one billion dollar home-grown technology startups.

• This startup policy would basically have shared infrastructure, incubation centers, human resources, funding and good governance through various supports from the state.
• Some of the main highlights of this policy are a world-class infrastructure for technology product startups at zero cost, various fiscal and non-fiscal subsidies and incentives, world-class pilot incubation centers from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and an international startup programmes to send brilliant startups from college/university and/or independent entrepreneurs to leading startup destinations to gain profound knowledge and understanding of how startups work.
• The state wants to boost entrepreneurship from college level and so that the policy has a special feature as all universities in AP would preferably give 5% grace marks and 20% attendance to student startup teams, those having a woman as cofounder.
• Also, a programme would be approached to organize district level competitions to generate business ideas among student groups from standard VIII to X with a maximum grant of Rs 25,000 per idea. Each year 50 such ideas would be facilitated.
• An academy would be set up in Tirupati to nurture innovation in the state by providing entrepreneurship and skill development training.
• The government will build an Initial Innovation Fund of  crore (1 billion) for entrepreneurs and businesses. However, it would not directly invest in the startups but would participate in SEBI (the Securities and Exchange Board of India) approved VC funds of up to 15% as Limited Partner. The VC fund would directly invest in the startups.
• Andhra Pradesh government will also build an improved ‘Single Window Clearance Unit’ to grant approvals and clearances to first time entrepreneurs.
• The government will also host a Cloud Server to connect every incubation centers in the state.
• Incubation centers in Andhra Pradesh would be established under PPP (Private Public Partnership) Model, the first in India, to improve the business environment by mixing both risk taking ability of Public Sector as well as execution skills of the Private Sector.
• Areas that are given importance are mobile-internet technologies, social media, analytics and cloud (SMAC), electronics, fables semiconductors etc. the selection process is open for entrepreneurs and businesses throughout the year.
• An improved ‘Andhra Pradesh Innovation Council’ would be setup with people from industry, incubators and other stakeholders to administer incentives to reach to businesses in a time-bound and transparent manner to avoid any kind of corruption.

 

For detailed information on the policy click here.