Lot of hopes are generated among entrepreneurs and industry bodies for the annual budget 2016-2017, which will be presented by the Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitley in Parliament on February 29.

During the launching of the new policy in order to uplift the startup ecosystem a fortnight ago, Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi a number of initiatives to encourage startups , including a $ 1.5 billion fund , and a sequence of tax break for investors and companies such as exemption from income tax for the first three years, exemptions from capital gains tax, cheaper and faster patent applications and 80% rebate on cost of patent.

While lauding the government’s Startup India initiative, co-founder and director of Chennai-based startup Energy Alternatives India Narasimhan Santhanam said that his company has been interacting with dozens of cleantech startups and found that most of them were not looking at the government for businesses; in fact, they considered the government a nuisance for obvious reasons.

However, for the cleantech domain, the government became the key stakeholder in many energy and environment related projects. “With Startup India, they can expect a more proactive participation from government in their projects and this would make a big difference to their success,” Santhanam added.

National Association of software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) advised in its pre budget recommendations for startups and ecommerce ecosystem, the government to exempt startups from direct and indirect taxes including Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) an effort that would reduce compliance burden and would reduce cash flows.