On 29th February, Finance Minister Arun Jaitely is all set to present the 3rd Union Budget on the behalf of Modi Government. IndianMediaBook gets in the conversation with online Healthcare players to understand, what they are expecting from upcoming budget.
The high expectations
Bamasish Paul Co-Founder, Healthenablr, is expecting increased budget allocation on healthcare and child welfare sector especially on programmes related to reducing female child infanticide, up gradation of hospital facilities in semi urban and rural centre.
“Special incentives for technology companies developing healthcare infrastructure and tele-health platform to help connect rural patients with doctors in urban centre in form of subsidised financial packages will help companies like Healthenablr to expand into semi-urban and rural markets”, commented Paul.
However, Indian healthcare expenditure is still amongst the lowest globally and there are significant challenges to be addressed both in terms of accessibility of healthcare services and quality of patient care.
“Expect the budget this year to take healthcare technology industry by surprise. The budget should reflect what Mr. Narendra Modi is trying to do for start-up companies,” expressed Abhimanyu Bhosale, CEO & Co-Founder, LiveHealth.
Growth of start-ups
The future of the health industry seems to be bright and will be one of the drivers for growth of the Indian economy. E-commerce/Retail healthcare is bound to explode, in the near future.
Vishesh Goel, Founder, FitMeIn, believes that Start-up India has set high expectations from the government within the start-up community. The announcements made were really worth the appreciation, however there are things needed to be addressed to help entrepreneurial ventures grow and become successful.
Sharing her thoughts, Aarti Gill Founder, FitCircle said, “Women entrepreneurship is recognized as an important source of economic growth. I feel, government should encourage diversity, by giving certain tax benefits to encourage inclusion of women in start-up workforce.”
The online healthcare space is very large and it is only increasing day by day with the growth in technology and mobile internet/apps.
According to Vipin Pathak, Co-Founder & CEO, Care24, Budget 2016 is highly awaited where everyone is expecting policy level changes to promote growth. At the juncture where global growth is not so promising, everyone is eying on Indian Growth story and we have to leverage this situation.
Tax is an issue
Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched its most anticipated Star-up India Action Plan. Modi announced a three-year income tax holiday for start-ups and exemption of capital gains tax for venture capital investments in them, as part of a host of incentives to promote new enterprises in the country.
Goel believes that the government should increase the tax rebate period from three years to at least five years as hardly any start-up reaches breakeven point in three years of inception to actually pay tax.
“Start-ups to be charged less corporate tax, say 20 percent against the normal 30 percent, as they are addressing some real issues faced by the country. This would allow more cash in hand to be reinvested in their businesses. These are some steps government must mull at in its budgetary exercise,” added Goel
Rahul Gupta, Founder- Labbazaar, opined that the policy regulations such as tax exemptions and ease of compliance will allow entrepreneurs to focus their time and energy in building their business by reducing the unnecessary administrative burden.
“We also look eagerly forward to the government’s aim of setting up incubators and accelerators which play an important role in the development of start-up and act as a guiding force to steer a start-up growths in the right direction,” expressed Gupta.
Modi’s Star-Up India Action Plan also promised self-certification and three-year exemption from inspections, an online portal and mobile app, an 80-percent cut in the patent application fee, a single-point hub for hand-holding, equal opportunities in government procurement and a Rs.10,000-crore dedicated fund for start-ups.
“Government has started great initiatives like “Make in India”, “Start-up India Initiative”, the budget has to support at monitory, infrastructure and policy level to realise these dreams. Some of the expectation we have is further easy FDI investment norms, licensing and start-up support (tax, documentation, licensing, legal). Entrepreneurs should feel protected and supported on ground level to make actual difference”, concluded Pathak.