With a view to boost Startup culture in the country, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry (Independent Charge) Nirmala Sitharaman today called the heads of about 30 startups to listen their concerns and expectations from the government.

Speaking to the reporters, Sitharaman said “We were keen to know how the startup activities going on, their expectations from the government, the difficulties they are facing. Difficulties may be related to the various ministries and what they want to do us further to move.”

Some of the prominent names which were to be part of the meeting are Paytm’s vice-president Shivanshu Gupta, Anand Subramanian, senior director, marketing communications at Ola, Suraj Saharan co-founder of Delhivery, online beauty retailer Nykaa.com’s Sachin Parakh, Shashank ND, co-ounder of Practo, Abhiraj Bhal, co-founder of UrbanClap, Anu Acharya, CEO of Mapmygenome, and Rivi Varghese, CEO and co-founder of CustomerXPs.

Minister said that she is happy for their participation and people have come and voice their concerns related to taxation, periods of investors getting released, regulators, compliance.

She informed that they have given us inputs and there are some sectorial issues on which I have instructed the secretary to ensure the interdepartmental meetings held for sectorial purposes.

Commenting on the funding issues for the Startups, Sitharaman said that funding was one of the issues government funding vs. the private funding. Both the funding’s were going hand to hand. (KNN Bureau)