Big corporates should mentor start-ups: Ravi Shankar Prasad

Large corporates need to instill confidence in start-ups and start mentoring them, Union Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on February 20 said while assuring that the government will do whatever is required to promote such ventures.

"Can you (industry) start mentoring start-ups...on the government part, whatever is further needed will be done but a simple start-up push by big corporates ultimately gives confidence in them," Prasad said during an Assocham conference on startups.

He said start-ups can be compared with the IT industry of India. "When the IT industry started, there was opposition also in early 90s, when mobile telephony started, there was lot of opposition. Now those conventional barriers have been broken," the Minister said.

To promote start-ups in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unveiled a slew of incentives like offering them a tax holiday and inspector raj-free regime for three years, capital gains tax exemption and Rs 10,000 crore corpus to fund them.

India has the third-largest number of start-ups globally. Prasad said that 'jugaad' technology is so integral to Indians, yet start-up culture could not rise in India because there was a policy mismatch.

"We must learn to respect the innovative spirit of Indians and this spirit is not only confined to people in industry, this is integral to every Indian," he said. Explaining the meaning of start-up, Prasad said, "One who is willing to take a risk in pursuit of his mad ambition to succeed is a start-up."