Girja Shankar Kaura
Gujarat and Karnataka have emerged as the ‘best performers’ in Category A, while Meghalaya was nominated as the ‘best performer’ in Category B in the States’ Startup Ranking 2021 that was released today.
The States Startup Ranking 2021 was released by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) conducted the third edition of the States’ Start-up Ranking Exercise with the key objective to promote India’s vision of competitive and cooperative federalism.
The states and Union Territories (UTs) were divided into two categories—Category A and Category B. The first category consists of states and UTs with a population of over one crore, while the second category consisted of states and UTs having a population lower.
The States’ Startup Ranking is an annual report presented by the DPIIT ranking the country’s states and UTs according to their start-up ecosystems. The framework was first launched in February 2018.
The report scores a state on a scale of 100 with 26 action points such as the capacity building of enablers and funding, mentorship and institutional support, among others. A total of 24 states and seven UTs participated in the exercise, which ranked them under five classes. These classes were best performers, top performers, leaders, aspiring leaders, and emerging start-up ecosystems.
The top performers included four states from Category A—Telangana, Kerala, Maharashtra and Odisha. The class also included Jammu and Kashmir as a representative from Category B.
The start-up leaders included five states from Category A (Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Assam) and two states and a UT from Category B (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands).
In the aspiring leaders category, the UTs of Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Delhi, and the states of Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, Rajasthan and Tripura were included.
States and UTs with an emerging start-up ecosystem included Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Mizoram and Ladakh. The exercise was launched to encourage states and union territories to work towards easing regulations for the growth of start-ups and strengthening the support to the start-up ecosystem.
As India becomes one of the leading start-up nations globally, the growth of entrepreneurship in Tier-II and Tier–III cities in the country has become necessary, officials said. There were four states/UTs with start-up policies in 2016. Today, there are over 30 states and UTs that have start-up policies, and 27 states and UTs have their own state start-up portal.
This edition had seven broad reform areas, which included institutional support, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, access to market, incubation support, funding support, mentorship support and capacity building of enablers.
The third edition of the exercise evaluated the support provided by states and union territories over a period from October 1, 2019 to July 31, 2021. Their submissions were evaluated over a six-month period and feedback was gathered from more than 7,200 beneficiaries in 13 different languages.
This edition is unique as it highlights the extensive support provided by states and union territories to the start-up ecosystem amidst a global pandemic.
