The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, has launched a call for startup applications for registration on the MAARG portal, the National Mentorship Platform by Startup India.
- To further boost the Indian startup ecosystem, currently ranked 3rd largest globally, Startup India is focused on catalysing the startup culture and building a strong and inclusive ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in India.
- In this context, MAARG portal – Mentorship, Advisory, Assistance, Resilience and Growth, is a one stop platform to facilitate mentorship for startups across diverse sectors, functions, stages, geographies, and backgrounds.
The objectives of the MAARG portal are –
- •To provide sector focused guidance, handholding, and support to startups throughout their lifecycle
- •To establish a formalized and structured platform that facilitates intelligent matchmaking between the mentors and their respective mentees
- •To facilitate efficient and expert mentorship for startups and build an outcome-oriented mechanism that allows timely tracking of the mentor-mentee engagements.
India and Startup
- India ranks globally 3rd in Start-Up ecosystem and also in terms of number of Unicorns.
- As per the latest data, there are currently 105 unicorns, out of which 44 were born in 2021 and 19 in 2022.
- India has increased the Gross Expenditure on R&D (GERD) more than three times in the last few years.
- During the Independence Day speech from the Red Fort on 15th August 2015, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had envisioned a new India which taps on the entrepreneurial potential of its people.
- On 16th January of the following year, the date which has now been declared as the National Startup Day, a program was initiated to lay out an action plan to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation and startups in the country.
- India in its 75th year of Independence is now home to as many as 75,000 StartUps.
- India’s startups today are not limited to only metros or big cities and added that 49 per cent of the start-ups are from tier-2 and tier-3 cities.
- Startup India program which was primarily setup to provide an enabling environment for the startups, has today evolved into the launchpad for them.
- From providing funding to tax incentives, from support on intellectual property rights to eased public procurement, from enabling regulatory reforms to access to international fests and events, Startup India program has become synonymous with sustainable economic growth.
- Out of the total recognized startups, around 12% cater to IT services, 9% to Healthcare and Life Sciences, 7% to education, 5% to professional and commercial services and 5% to agriculture.
