CHANDIGARH TO COME OUT WITH A DEDICATED STARTUP POLICY: ADVISER, DHARAM PAL

Chandigarh, (Aditi) : CII Northern Region organised the ‘Chandigarh Startups Session’ as part of its flagship initiative, ICONN 2022 today. The theme for the session was ‘Shaping a Vibrant Entrepreneurial Ecosystem’. Eminent speakers at the session shared government strategies and policies being undertaken to support entrepreneurs in the region, which enable startups to ensure more purposeful, productive, agile, and flexible ways of conducting business.

Speaking at the occasion, Sh. Dharam Pal, Adviser to the Administrator,Chandigarh said, “We are keen to create a robust ecosystem for promoting innovation in businesses. Chandigarh will soon come up with its own startup policy, a dedicated startup hub, a seed fund with a corpus of ₹50 crores, and more. A draft scheme has already been published to invite comments and suggestions from stakeholders. We are looking at data from the economic census, private research platforms, ministerial press releases, Startup India’s official portal, industry reports, media articles, and views from the key stakeholders to come up with a better policy than before so that government efforts to transform the economy of Chandigarh through entrepreneurship policies do not fail to live up to the expectations of its startups.”

Delivering the keynote address, Mr Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman, CII Centre of Excellence on Start-Ups & Entrepreneurship and Co-Founder, Infosys Ltd said, “It is the collective responsibility of the industry, high net-worth individuals (angel investors), academic institutions, and the government to work together to build a robust startup ecosystem in any state or city. We need to nurture startups in new and innovative areas along with strengthening and growing the startup ecosystem in Chandigarh. The UT will also have to work with Punjab and Haryana to effectively utilise resources in the surrounding areas.”