Union Budget 2017: Start-up India hopes for tax cut, fresh funds and foreign investments

Union Budget 2017 is due on February 1. This will be the third budget to be presented by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and it won’t be easy. 

The budget 2017 will not only be unique for its preponement from the usual month of March and clubbing with Railway budget, but will also have unprecedented expectations resulting from demonetisation. 

Industry, market and common people, all have high hopes from this budget as they demand PM Modi to fulfil promises he made in the November 8 speech and since then, wherein he asked India to bear with him as he realises the dreams of ‘Achhe Din’.

In the run-up to the Union Budget 2017, we spoke to start-ups across India to understand what they hope to hear from the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley come February 1. 

‘Tax cut from 30% to 25% to give start-ups in India a push’  -Gobind Ram Chaudhary, Managing Director, Anmol Bakers Pvt Ltd

With Union Budget 2017-18 to be presented just few days away, we expect the Government to provision deduction in existing corporate tax of 30 per cent to approximately 25 percent in order to improve the business environment and give strong push to growth. This year the growth prospect looks better than the last year for all sectors. For maintaining the momentum we urge the Government to do not impose any further increase in service tax. However the tax on banking services should be reduced by 2% instead of 10% or 11%. Further, we urge the government to remove the numerous taxes on services as it would encourage the MSME Industry to grow on a larger scale. 

‘Demonetisation has raised our expectation for better foreign investment’ -Abhishek Rawal, Co-Founder Indian Threads

After the bold and historic decision of demonetisation, the expectation from the forthcoming budget has gone up. In the upcoming budget of 2017, Government has been moving steadily on improving the fashion industry and the budget will have a lot of announcements to make. One important thing which has happened in the recent past is very clear, the large global manufacturers have indicated that the procurement from India will increase in the current fiscal and budget 17 will help in improving. That is extremely important for Indian textile exporters and Indian textile industry.

‘GST might add to wedding market jitters’ - Director Kunal Khanna, White Frog Production

3-So it’s time again, we sit back and be in a quandary about what the union FM will put on the table for the people. This Budget, the wedding industry is in anticipation of a few jitters in the market. With stocks being invariably dismaying, markets have been struggling to hold its ground amidst much volatile foreign markets. Considering this, it’s only palpable that the Wedding Industry too will be hit by the falling stocks and surging prices. GST could contribute to the disruptive markets too. Sticking to the implications on the Wedding markets, there is a possibility the soaring prices of goods and services due to the cash outflow will lead to a lower demand. This diminished demand might incur vendors heavy losses. If the government does not push growth, it’ll be a challenge for them to check fiscal deficit. The wedding industry, from a catering vendor to a photographer/videographer is anticipating introduction of GST, with reduced tax rates, for increased demands in services. It’ll be better for all and sundry from the wedding fraternity that the Budget contains something positive for the consumer sector. 

‘Start-ups in India need incubators and fresh pump of funds’  -Varun Bansal, Co-Founder, Airlines Technology

We expect Government to set up start-up incubators who can fund good amount of money to some selected start-ups who are doing good work in innovation. Funds can come on milestone basis in way of grants with equal contribution from start-up itself. This practice is very common in Australia and Singapore as it helps in job creation and improving innovation.