The countdown has begun for Nirmala Sitharaman’s fourth Budget on February 1 this year. All eyes are focused on union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s annual budget 2022-23? Will she be able to put India on the path for economic revival, by increasing production, curbing inflation, and maintaining an eight per cent plus growth rate?
Here’s what some of the industry CEOs expect from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget on 1 February 2022:
Priyanka Salot, Co-founder, The Sleep Company
With its expected focus on economic recovery, we can expect a further push towards boosting the startup ecosystem in the Union Budget 2022-23, particularly for companies that are working under the ‘Make in India’ initiative. Manufacturing startups have made a headstart in exports, but need critical support in areas like obtaining international patents and a renewed focus on the logistics sector. As startups continue to innovate and explore new avenues of growth, the government can provide crucial support by streamlining the cumbersome compliance requirements and reducing GST on Make in India brands. The focus on encouraging growth must be encouraged incentivizing business deployment along with building a robust forward-looking business ecosystem.
Prashant Solomon, MD, Chintels India & the Hon. Treasurer for CREDAI NCR
2021 was a ‘Year of Recovery’ for Indian Real Estate. The upcoming budget will play a pivotal role in fulfilling the growth trajectory across real estate and the overall economy. In order to improve the overall health of the sector, strengthen financial inflows and reduce delays there is a need for a single-window clearance system. Entitling REITs to invest in residential projects, relaxations in provisions for investing in REITs can also be an essential amendment that the government must take into consideration as it will enable developers and investors access to investment opportunities without spending a lot.
Some of the other areas that require attention include tax rebates on housing loan interest rates, GST waiver for under-construction properties, rise in FDI inflow, expanding the government-backed stress fund SWAMIH, the introduction of new mechanisms to ensure ease of acquiring funds for real estate projects and most importantly attaining an industry status. It will help towards the elimination of unnecessary processes, better transparency, ease of getting approvals. Incentivising both, rental as well as affordable housing sectors accompanied by incentivisation of private investment in the affordable housing sector can also be a critical push that the government can induce to ensure the growth of India’s real estate sector. For India to achieve the vision of a 5 Trillion economy, the government must provide requisite thrust to this labour-intensive sector as it supports employment as well as 200 ancillary industries including SMEs and MSMEs.
Dr Kulneet Suri, Sr. Director at Institute of Management Studies( IMS ) Noida
We expect the Government to support the Higher Education sector in terms of research, especially medical healthcare research, as for the past two years the Education sector has done a balancing act amidst pandemic and therefore larger and robust systems are to be created to boost research for better preparedness for a pandemic like situations. Micro-campuses are the need of the hour. Online learning must be promoted to reach out to youth in Tier 2-3 cities. Upbeat policy implementation for the Education sector to foster academics with Industry is necessary.
Himanshu Periwal, Co-founder, unlu
The government has of late surpassed expectations of entrepreneurs with their acute focus on the Indian startup ecosystem. We have high expectations from the budget, especially with regards to the edtech and creator tech segments, which are allowing innovation in learning during these distressing times of pandemic. With regards to learning amongst college students and young professionals, we expect the government to 1) encourage universities to integrate new-age skills in their curriculum and 2) allow startups to become part of the Skill Development governing bodies, such as NSDC (national skill development corporation), MSDE (Ministry of Skill Development and entrepreneurship), etc. This will ensure the innovations of new-age startups are able to impact the learning ecosystem in India at scale. Overall for the edtech ecosystem, which is still in its nascent stages and expanding at a high growth rate, we expect the government to support the same with lowered GST and a higher FDI allowance, which can further help boost its growth.
Priyanka Madnani, CEO & Founder, Easy to Pitch
India is the third-largest startup ecosystem sector in the world expected to witness YoY growth of consistent annual growth of 12-15%. Significantly, in 2018-19 the number of women entrepreneurs stood at 14%, up from 10% and 11% in the previous two years. India is currently home to 81 unicorns as of now, with a total valuation of $274 billion. Of these, 43 unicorns with a total valuation of $89 billion emerged just last year. In 2021 alone, Indian startups have so far raised upward of $20 billion in funding.
The startup sector has high expectations from Union Budget 2022-23, Union Budget 2022-23 should introduce additional startup-friendly policies and tax relaxations to enable spending on innovation, ease-of-doing-business, and reducing compliance costs, a slew of homegrown startups, ease in terms of investment, this will encourage entrepreneurs in a different way and they can scale up to the next level without worrying about their revenue sharing. Workshops must be conducted for startups that are not getting an adequate amount of funds to rectify the problem. As our Govt is more focused on Make in India and backing the startups’ ecosystem. We are now more hopeful for the upcoming budget in which we expect our Govt to allocate a good amount of money for these emerging entrepreneurs.
Dhiraj Naubhar, CEO and CoFounder of DROR
Startups desire Government to facilitate a new category called safety-tech which is much desired for India. Today India is ranked 135 on Global Peace Index by the Institute of Economics & Peace an international agency. A total of 5 Mn crimes are reported by National Crime Record Bureau in 2019. Lack of personal safety affects the overall economy drastically and reduces consumption as citizens shackle themselves. Private Public joint collaboration is desired to solve the problem of personal safety as a key enabler to the Indian economy. Funds set up for women’s safety are underutilized and most Govt safety apps are dying of zero traction. Active collaboration between private and public entities can change this scenario. Google thrived on grant funds from Government agencies in the early days and went on to build a great business while solving a big problem for society. We need Government to play a super active role in creating safety-tech as a category and invite startups to solve this major issue in India which is shackling our lives and the Indian economy.
Nikhil Kapur, Founder & Director, Atmantan Wellness Centre
- Incentivise individuals who are imbibing preventive health care & natural healing into their daily lives. These individuals who are in good health, by and large, don’t add to the already stressed medical infrastructure of the country. hence when these individuals travel to NABH accredited wellness centres or subscribe to online health plans, they should be rewarded with lower insurance premiums, LTA benefits etc.
- The industry needs softer rates on borrowing and longer tenure for repayment. this will help the existing players who have invested and need more support to tide over the crisis.
- The international travel sentiment remains poor for the next 9-12 months. and hence there is an urgent requirement for the GoI to extend all the EPCG licenses for another 5 years to help us tide over the situation.
Vikas Bhasin, Managing Director, SAYA Homes
The real estate industry is expecting a robust revival in housing demand this year. We are anticipating a favourable and enabling Union Budget this year focusing on a few key tax benefits, ease of liquidity, GST exemptions, and raw material price reductions. It is the right time to provide industrial status to the real estate sector so that it may access lower-cost credit facilities from banks.
Rakesh Dube, CEO, TaxGenie
In this budget, we and most of the MSMEs are hoping for the GST rationalisation, TDS reductions and relaxation in compliance. Covid has led MSMEs defaulting on compliance due to cash-flow challenges, off-site working etc.
We hope the Finance minister will take cognisance of these points and announce some special incentives for MSMEs, one such could be giving Tax Credit for investing in Information Technology. MSME requires a booster dose to revive from covid and digitization can be one of many approaches we are hoping for.
Shyatto Raha, Founder and CEO, MyHealthcare
As of today, medical practitioners, clinicians and clinical establishments such as hospitals, clinics and labs are exempted from GST. Start-ups and health tech companies like MyHealthcare, who are working towards using technology in making healthcare delivery available to a wider population continue to come under the purview of GST. This burden increases the cost of healthcare for our patients across India.
COVID 19 has brought out how stressed our healthcare system is in India, it has also been proven that digital healthcare or technology-enabled healthcare delivery has become a primary channel for patients to access quality healthcare. Health tech companies have worked hard to bring effective solutions more accessible. In the upcoming budget, we would hope and request the government to remove GST on healthcare service providers & digital health companies directly involved in the process of care delivery. This would help relieve a whole lot of financial burden on us, allowing us to deliver quality & more affordable healthcare to our patients across the country. This would be more than welcome at a time when our country is going through the 3rd wave of the pandemic.
Vijay Kumar Mikkilineni, Head of Marketing, TCL India
Reduction in import tariff is something we are expecting, this will help us compete with countries like China, Mexico, Thailand and more. In the last two years, the PLI schemes have provided momentum to domestic and international investments, but so the investment from the Government side for infrastructure building will boost the ‘Make in India’ movement. We have to integrate India into the global supply chain scenario, to achieve that tariffs should be equal or less than competitive markets.
