I do believe that the outcome will benefit several techies out there…

Would call your attention to the line “its short sightedness of entrepreneurs here, which are not fully participating and co-operating”. By saying that you are self-defeating your intention of doing some good for the startups.

Secondly, the govt. already levies enough taxes on our industry (including tech fledglings) and therefore has a ‘capitalist’ duty to provide an infrastructure (policies & ideation-level funding) back into the eco-system.

It’s kinda hard to buy a story that Government has an interest any different from that of proto or headstart or other such forums, albeit in smaller form. It always works for money & with money, for the Government too.

Cheers,
Arvind

I got a call from MSME as well and have given them a list of issues faced by startups in India. More importantly there should be money available (without the endless forms and pre conditions) to help fund ideas.

Lets see how they manage to plug that gap.

As an initiative, I am all for it, and it needs the help of the entire ecosystem before it can deliver.

Cheers

Akshat

This NITEE will serve as platform where one can come and lend support.Today no body knows how many entrepreneurs are there in NCR,Bangalore,Hyderabad.No body has this data, neither Pluggd.in nor Proto,Headtart,Barcamp.So if DST has to lend any support, where it should go, whom they should contact ?

So it has to start from some specific region, then only DST or any other body can come and talk.So this totally makes sense in formation of a nodal center.

In fact its short sightedness of entrepreneurs here, which are not fully participating and co-operating.

At least they are not making money from entrepreneurs pocket which others do like Proto and Headstart.

Simply sitting and blaming a system is very easy,you need to see the efforts these guys are making.

Again read the mail which you have got from FMC,which explains clearly the efforts and options.

Understand the purpose of NITEE, then only you will the get clarity in your thoughts.

Thanks.

Great business idea.

Whoever knew that there are connotations attached to this …
Here’s my little bit of adventure to the madness. I spent 4 weeks getting a company together, 3 weeks to get a PAN Number for the company (delays) and have been waiting for over 4 weeks for understanding whats taking so long for the Service Tax number to be approved. “Aap paper le kar aayein aur phir dekhte hai”.

Lovely … so now the instead of taking care of my core which is setting up the business, taking care of the technical aspects, the legal bits, marketing and everything else, it is required of us to zip down to where-ever the office is and wait till the gentleman comes back from lunch and hangs up his mobile to talk to you.

I agree with you Ashish. The Department and its Entrepreneurial Cell would make it so simple by giving us a single-window clearance for starters. All other gyaan … can wait

Correction – post is written by Arvind and not Ashish!

I’ll highlight some key goals (which Ashish missed here):
- to give entrepreneurs a platform for networking
- to support them in various ways like legal help, sponsoring events, trainings etc.
- to give them a representation for bargaining power with Government for policy changes (like single-window startup registration process)

I got sponsored to TieCON under this initiative, so I’ve actually benefited from this initiative. However, I’ll try to be as unbiased as possible:

- the intentions are good, but like many other Government initiatives the execution is a bottleneck.
- it requires people like me to step up and volunteer (like TIE volunteers) where we’re incapable because we don’t have bandwidth
- there are no benchmarks to measure success of the initiatives; they’re pretty subjective.

Commenting on some of Ashish’s points:
- there is an online forum in the form of a Linkedin group, but it is inactive
- there is some money, but not as cash but some financial support (like my registration to TIE)

IMO the Government should focus on improving areas like policy where it is the agent of change, rather than trying to be an enabler for other agents. Finally, this is my longest blog comment ever!

~ Arvind

Is that what we call the will of the government?

You should look at the Govt.’s motivation of making such initiatives. These initiatives are mostly sponsored and are meant to serve the sponsor’s needs. IBM being the sponsor in the example you mentioned, i suppose it is serving their purpose in which ever way it is apt for them.

You remember the good old days in college where we would be addressed with some “Gyaan” session on “Career options after Btech.?” and then it would finally turn out to be a promotion event for the likes of Career Launcher etc.
These events are no different.

We being on the receiving side would always think the whole organization is faulty but it must have been a single person who was responsible for the task but was never motivated enough to do this. He took it as a order and finished it as one. The executor is not a part of the idea and was never asked for an opinion so how can we expect him to do this effectively?

Dont worry the situation will change soon. I Even Infosys faced problems when it was starting up but now that it has grown and is contributing (along with IT peers) to GDP, govt. takes IT export seriously and has helped to quite an extent. Similarly once we start seeing few good startups in tech. product field policies would be twisted for the good. It could be more of a chicken-egg problem.

Enough cribbing on my part!