The global investment flows into the Indian start ups has crossed 11.5 billion US dollars, underscoring the growing confidence of investors worldwide in the resilience and business viability of the Indian entrepreneurship.
Speaking at the first graduation ceremony of PSG Institute of Technology and Applied Research, Coimbatore, the Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu called for tapping the creative potential of the country’s youth to make India a leading knowledge and innovation hub.
"The global investors have confidence in our start ups. Investment in these start up enterprises through Alternative Investment Funds has reached INR 800 billion. This shows resilience and business viability of our entrepreneurs," Naidu told the first batch graduates of the institute.
The Vice President said he was happy that young Indian entrepreneurs are gradually becoming job providers.
"Today more than 150 thousand jobs have been generated by start ups. India is increasingly emerging as innovation society and I am glad that as many as 21 states including Tamil Nadu, have formulated their start up policies to encourage and incentivize entrepreneurs," Naidu said.
"Today with 39,000 start ups, we are the second largest global hub of start ups. It is also heartening to note that 44% of these start ups are located in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. That indicates the culture of innovative entrepreneurship is also thriving in smaller towns," Naidu told the students.
"In this age of Intellectual Property Rights, the innovation and entrepreneurship of young professionals will play a major role in propelling India’s economy to newer heights," Naidu said.
"Please remember that knowledge is going to be the driver of Indian economy and will play a vital role in improving the living conditions of the people. Therefore, India must rise to the occasion and reorient its higher education system to be globally competitive," Naidu added.
Stressing the need to harvest India’s demographic dividend, the Vice President said that the time has come to reposition India as one of the leading economic powers in the world. "We need to vastly expand our manufacturing industry, apart from turning our higher education institutions into world class centres of learning." he added.
"As we have the advantage of one of the largest educated youth force, the need of the hour is tap their creative potential to the optimum to make India a leading knowledge and innovation hub. Please remember that India was once called as Vishwaguru and the country used to contribute 27 per cent of the global GDP," he said.
"The time has come to reposition India as one of the leading economic powers in the world. At present India enjoys immense demographic dividend with 65% of our population being under 35 years. We have a work force of around 480 million with a 10 million joining every year. However, we have a very narrow window of 20 years till 2040 to harvest this demographic dividend," he said.
With Indian markets flooded with Chinese goods, Prime Minister Narendra Modi government has rolled out Start Up India mission, offering huge incentive and tax breaks to enterprising Indian, in hope to bring a turnaround in Indian manufacturing sector which has been largely reduced to labelling industry of imported goods.
As per securities market regulator SEBI, Alternative Investment Fund or AIF is any fund established or incorporated in India which is a privately pooled investment vehicle and collects funds from sophisticated investors, whether Indian or foreign.
An AIF may raise funds from any sophisticated investor whether Indian, foreign or Non Resident Indians (NRIs), who inter alia undertake risk of investing in primarily unlisted or illiquid securities. However, AIF other than angel fund can not accept an investment of value less than INR 10 million. In case investors are employees or directors, the minimum value of investment shall be INR 2.5 million.
Overseas investments can not exceed 25% of the investible funds, under the rules, to overall limit of USD 500 million. The AIF has a time limit of 6 months from the date of approval from SEBI for making allocated investments in offshore venture capital undertakings.