India / Maharashtra has highest number of startup jobs: Piyush Goyal

Union minister for commerce and industry Piyush Goyal, on Wednesday (December 11), informed Lok Sabha that the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT)-recognised startups have created 2.85 lakh jobs.

While answering a question on tax exemption to startups and the employment created thereof, Goyal informed that DPIIT has recognised 23,657 startups as on December 4, 2019. Of this, highest were in Maharashtra— 4443— and has created 52,847 jobs.

In terms of jobs, this is followed by Karnataka, which has 3444 recognised startups enabling 46462 jobs. Next comes Delhi, with 3001 startups and 34,489 jobs.

The minister also informed the parliament that under the government’s flagship fund-of-funds scheme, Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) has committed INR 3123.2 Cr to 47 Sebi-registered alternative investment funds (AIFs) as on November 21, 2019. These funds have raised a corpus fund of INR 25,728 Cr.

“About INR 695.9 Cr have been drawn from the fund-of-funds for startups. And INR 2,669.83 Cr have been invested into 279 startups,” he said.

According to NSSO’s periodic labour force survey (PLFS) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, India’s unemployment rate hit a 45-year-high of 6.1% in 2017-18. Moreover, the unemployment rate was higher in urban areas (7.8%) as compared to 5.3% in rural areas of the country, NSSO noted.

‘The App Economy in India’ report by US-based policy think-tank Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) recently said that the app economy in India has created 1.67 Mn jobs in the country. The report says that the app sector could be a potential source of jobs for India going forward, especially given current government goals for economic and employment growth across a wide range of industries and geographies.

In line with the startup hubs, the report shows that Karnataka has the highest contribution to app economy employment with 368K jobs, followed by Maharashtra and Delhi at 283K and 248K, respectively.

Recently, in order to address problems in the development of women entrepreneurship and tackle issues such as access to funding, market availability, business skills among others, the government has reserved 10% of this INR 10K Cr fund for women-led startups.