Modi says India committed to providing 'ease of doing business' for its youth

New Delhi, November 7, 2020

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said India is committed to providing "ease of doing business" to its youth so that they could bring changes in the lives of millions of their countrymen through their innovations.

Addressing the 51st annual convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi via video conference, Modi said the AtmaNirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India) campaign is a mission that gives opportunities to youth, technocrats and tech-enterprise leaders of the country.

He said that, today, a favorable environment has been created for implementation of the ideas and innovation of the technocrats freely and to scale them and market them easily.

"The country will give you 'ease of business'. You just work for 'ease of living' of the people of this country," he said.

Modi said this had been the thought process behind the major reforms carried out in almost every sector in the recent past. He listed the sectors where opportunities have been created for innovation and new start-ups for the first time due to the reforms.

The Prime Minister urged the fresh IIT graduates to recognise the needs of the country and connect with the changes on the ground. He also asked them to identify with the aspirations of the common people in the context of Atamnirbanar Bharat.

Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ and Minister of State for Education Sanjay Dhotre were present on the occasion. Secretary, Higher Education, Amit Khare, Director, IIT Delhi, V. Ramgopal Rao, and senior officials of the Ministry also participated on the occasion.

Congratulating more than 2000 IITians on their convocation, Modi said Other Service Provider (OSP) guidelines have been simplified and restrictions have been removed recently, which would reduce the Burden of Compliance for BPO industries. He said the BPO industry has also been exempted from various requirements including bank guarantee. He added that provisions that prevented the tech industry from facilities such as Work From Home or Work From Anywhere, have also been removed. This will make the country's IT sector globally competitive and will give more opportunities to young talent, he said.

The Prime Minister said today India is among the countries where corporate tax is the lowest. More than 50 thousand startups have started in India since the Start-up India campaign. He listed the outcome of the Government’s efforts with respect to promoting startups like the four-fold increase in the number of patents in the country in the last five years, a five-fold increase in trademark registrations. He said over 20 Indian unicorns have been established over the years and this number would increase further in the next one or two years.

He said that, from incubation to funding, startups are being helped. He said for funding of startups, a Fund of Funds has been created with a corpus of Rs 10 thousand crores. In addition, for a period of three years, startups are offered many facilities like tax exemption, self-certification and easy exit.

Modi said that, under the National Infrastructure Pipeline, investment of more than Rs 1 lakh crore has been planned. This will create a state-of-the-art infrastructure across the country that will meet the needs of both the present and the future.

He gave four mantras to the students for their workplace: Focus on quality, never compromise; ensure scalability, make your innovations work at a mass scale; assure reliability, build long-term trust in the market; and bring in adaptability, be open to change and expect uncertainty as a way of life.

The Prime Minister said post-Covid world was going to be very different and technology will play the biggest role in it. He said the present batch of students has a first mover advantage to learn and adapt to the new norms emerging in the workplace and he urged them to make most use of this.

NNN