Northern states laggard in startup rankings

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 15

The northern region has to work hard to attract startups as no state from the region has been ranked as top performer in the second edition of Ranking of States on Support to Startup Ecosystems released by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) recently.

Punjab and Haryana were placed under the Aspiring Leaders’ category along with Jharkhand, Telangana and Uttarakhand. They are a notch above Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, which were ranked at the bottom in Emerging Startup Ecosystems as per the States Startup Ranking Report 2019.

Gujarat topped the list as the best performer. The ‘top performers’ include Karnataka and Kerala while Bihar, Maharashtra, Odisha and Rajasthan were put in the ‘Leaders’ category.

As many as 22 states and three Union Territories participated in the ranking. For the purpose of ranking, the states were classified into five categories: Best Performers, Top Performers, Leaders, Aspiring Leaders and Emerging Startup Ecosystems.

The startup ecosystem in the country is replete with growth stories due to the role of stakeholders but it is mainly due to lack of ecosystem the northern states seems to be laggard.

“In the northern region, access to seed capital and venture funding support is difficult as compared to top-performing states. This is the main reason behind lower rankings,” said a senior government official.

Besides, there is a need for robust policy framework and complete transparency in the policy implementation. “The need of the hour is to build a robust ecosystem and closely monitor futuristic measures to spur the growth of the startups,” said another official.