New Delhi: In just over a year after getting a start-up policy, Andaman and Nicobar Islands looks set to be one of India’s next start-up hubs.
According to a senior official of the administration, the Union Territory now has 92 registered start-ups, 16 of which are recognised by the Union government’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).
Andaman and Nicobar Islands was also the top performer among 13 states and Union Territories in the start-up rankings of 2019 released by the Narendra Modi government earlier this month.
The islands also emerged on top of the rankings among all north-eastern states and union territories with the exclusion of Assam and Delhi.
The start-ups from Andaman and Nicobar Islands registered with DPIIT include information technology service providers like Nouveau Techsolutions Private Ltd, Britech IT, Digital Arts Technologies Private Limited and KBJD Trade Services Private Ltd, and travel and tourism firms such as Go2andaman.com, Degree Celsius Tourism Private Ltd, Online Andaman and Nico Technologies and Travel Solutions Private Limited.
There are a few others, including Andaman Airways Private Ltd that is involved in transportation and storage, and Aquatropics Pvt Ltd in agriculture.
The firms not recognised by DPIIT yet are from a mix of sectors and fields such as marketing, food and beverages, IT services, travel and tourism, retail, logistics and analytics.
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How did it manage to do this?
Monthly allowances for start-up founders, awareness campaigns in every gram panchayat and extensive hand-holding by the administration aided the UT to top the rankings within months of getting a policy.
“We brought out a new policy in December 2018 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit. We were the first Union Territory to publish a start-up policy,” said Ajit Anand, Director of Industries, in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, pointing out that the state undertook extensive campaigns to encourage start-ups.
“We conducted awareness campaigns in each and every panchayat village — in gram sabhas and far-flung rural areas — from Diglipur to Campbell Bay. We went to colleges, schools and industrial training institutes spreading awareness of our policies,” he told ThePrint.
The UT of Andaman and Nicobar Islands is 1,400 km away from mainland India. It comprises over 800 islands and islets of which around 31 are inhabited. The main mode of transportation between these islands is ferries making logistics a major challenge for the administration.
What rankings say about Andaman & Nicobar
According to the start-up rankings report for 2019, the UT provides 100 per cent intellectual property assistance to start-ups in terms of provision of subsidies for filing national or international patents/trademarks/copyright.
The UT’s start-up policy provides for a monthly allowance of Rs 15,000 for a year for start-up founders. In case the founder is a woman, transgender, schedule caste, scheduled tribe, socially and educational backward communities, or physically handicapped person, the monthly allowance is Rs 20,000, it said.
According to the UT’s policy, start-ups recognised by DPIIT are also eligible for some incentives, like a one-time Rs 3 lakh marketing and publicity related expenditure from the government, reimbursement of goods and services tax, patent costs, and power subsidy.
Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ policy also proposed to set up innovation labs in schools, an annual student start-up festival for students to showcase their innovations as well as a mandatory industrial training semester in the final year of studies in colleges.
Anand said 92 start-ups from different sectors have registered with the UT, of which 16 are recognised by DPIIT. “There is a lot of interest in the tourism and e-commerce space,” he said.
There are 37,764 DPIIT-recognised start-ups across the country.
The Narendra Modi government launched the rankings in 2018 to encourage states to develop a start-up ecosystem and provide institutional support to such institutions.
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