Budget Insides from Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures

Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures say

As expected the current budget has something for all. The Hon FM has touched every aspect of society. The focus has been on supporting growth and continuing the expenditure on infra-building. While the budget seems populist but this has been possible only due to the strong performance of the economy in general. Some of the key impacts for startups in the budget which will also help the investment momentum are:

  • Provision for agri accelerator will certainly help interest in investment in agri tech and in general in agribusiness. The accelerator will help work on innovative ideas and may help on packaged food, which will not only help in increasing productivity but also farmer income.
  • Setting up of 157 medical colleges will not only help in improving health infra but will also help promote medi-tech startups as they will have more avenues and be close to their place than depending on a few hospitals for testing their innovation. This will certainly help in promoting health-tech and medi-tech startups
  • A special initiative in setting up 3 centers for AI, will help to build better startups in the AI space and it will help in building resources and testing innovation.
  • FM laid special mention on converting Manhole to Machine-hole. This will certainly help companies like Genrobotic which has built a robotic product to eliminate manual scavenging and help in the rehabilitation of people involved in cleaning manual holes. This kind of direct involvement also encourages investors to support startups in the space. Unicorn took the early bet and is glad to have faith in new innovative products in this space. We expect much more development in this space
  • While many may think the setting of 50 new airports is a normal announcement, the fact is, it will help in developing the economy in those cities. This will not only help in uplifting cities but will also help in tourism and also mushrooming of startups and access to cities will be easy. This will also help in a lot of job creation
  • FM has also given special attention to MSMEs and startups. Announcements like easing KYC, and making PAN a uniform identification for business will go a long way in setting up new businesses, especially in the Fintech and Insuretech segments. Increasing the tax relief period from 7 years to 10 years is a big announcement and will help startups redeploy earnings on the growth of the business. Also, tax rebates to MSMEs earning upto Rs 3 crore will also help companies to have ease of cash flow