Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal Opens Assam Start Up – The Nest

GUWAHATI: Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal inaugurated the ‘Assam Start Up – the Nest’, an initiative of the Industry & Commerce Department at a programme held on Sunday at Ambari in Guwahati.

The initiative is a state-owned incubator for the start-up ventures which seeks to augment the business environment by promoting idea generation to start-up companies and help them establish and accelerate their growth and success.

Highlighting that the State Government is making all efforts to provide a conducive environment to the investors to facilitate industrial growth, the Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said that Act East Policy has given impetus to the trade and business in the state and through this policy the state would become the gateway and the business hub of South East Asia. He also highlighted the state government’s industry-friendly policies like North East Industrial Development Scheme and the Industrial & Investment Policy of Assam which has given momentum to the industrial sector of the State.

The incubation centre which is set up by the State Government under Assam Start-up Policy2017 with technical expertise from IIM Calcutta Innovation Park aims to facilitate the growth of at least 1000 new start-ups over the next 5 years. It also seeks to attract funding opportunities to the tune of USD 250 million for state start-ups and incubators while establishing itself as a centre of excellence in the start-up ecosystem. The start-up entrepreneurs will also get the networking opportunities for funding their projects. Dedicated mentorship and capacity enhancement pieces of training will be provided in the incubation centre.

Sarbananda Sonowal also said that Rs 12,000 crore has been invested in Assam out of the total Rs 79,000 crore committed during the Advantage Assam investment summit which saw the signing of some 240 MoUs, and Sonowal stated that this startup incubation centre is one of the results of the summit which would open up newer avenues of growth for the young aspiring entrepreneurs of the state.

Saying that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s relentless push to Northeast region into the high growth trajectory by policy initiatives and infrastructure development has proved his commitment to the region and made it the ‘Astalaxmi’ and new engine of growth for the country. Our youth must work hard to achieve excellence in all fields and thereby inculcate a healthy work culture which would make rapid development possible for the state, he said.

Industry and Commerce Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said that wherever he has gone in the world he has come across Assamese youth taking leadership roles some prominent organizations and therefore this incubation centre would provide platform for the young entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas to achieve greater things and generate employment. He also said that this start-up incubation hub would generate a movement of enterprise and venture while pushing the destructive and irrelevant movements on the street to back burner.

Many successful entrepreneurs of the country like Alok Bansal of Policybazaar.com, Arup Nandan Das Adhikari of Hearing Plus etc and mentors were present on the occasion who shared their experiences of starting up and turning their ideas into big enterprises.

AIDC Vice Chairman Jitu Talukdar, Additional Chief Secretary of Industry and Commerce Ravi Capoor, Commissioner and Secretary of Personnel Department KK Dwivedi were also present at the programme among others.

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