Union Budget 2019 – What Indian CEOs And Entrepreneurs Are Expecting

After the results of Lok Sabha Election, the BJP Government again came back to the power along with that the Union Budget is also around the corners. Let's see what the government is going to make the change in the upcoming Union Budget special on the technology and electronics sector. Here in this article, I have interacted with a number of CEO, Founder and Co-Founders of the companies which are in the market and get you their expectations from the upcoming budget. We also know that an economy grows leaps and bounds when many new people get additional spending power.

While talking with the Mayank Bidawatka and Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-founder at Vokal said, "The amount collected from income tax is very low in India. A very small percentage of the population pays this tax and most non-salaried people find smart ways to avoid paying this tax. Of the salaried, majority of the people paying tax are in the lower rung. As a result, the have-nots get axed. Instead, if we could increase the lowest tax bracket from 2.5 lakhs to 6 lakhs, that could help increase disposable income for the majority."

In this day and age of technology, a lot of the innovation will be seen from startups rather than larger established companies. Anything that hampers this innovation will hamper India's future growth. The government should do everything in its power to help fuel innovation in India and ban policies that hamper such future growth.

With reference to the upcoming Union Budget, Vinay Agrrawal - Founder and CEO of Hubbler said, "For a Make in India vs Register in India, We founders have a huge expectation from the upcoming budget to make India the preferred Hub, especially for the startup sector. Tax woes like Angel Tax continue to haunt Indian entrepreneurs and investors. Several Indian startups, although operating in India, have registered their companies in Singapore to benefit from the mature funding opportunities, ease of doing business, lower capital gain tax from the selling of shares by investors."

"Indian startups are literally going places today & the overpowering regulations can dampen the spirits and the Pride of Make in India and Registered in India" he added.

India has become the second largest startup hub in the world. The Union Budget 2019 is bringing in a robust hope for the startup and technology industries in India. What will be interesting to see is whether the expectations will be met with similar vigor and thirst by the Government of India this time around.

Vinay Singhal, Co-Founder and CEO, WittyFeed said, "The technological disruption directly shapes the future of startups and with the upcoming Union Budget, we expect to witness a clear vision around how technology, especially AI, and startups will be dealt with in unison."

Sameer Aggarwal, Founder and CEO, RevFin have a different opinion and expectation from the Union Budget, according to him the government should set up a hundred hubs across the country. These would be physical hubs where startups will have access to shared services like legal, accounting, PR, company secretary etc and will also have office space at reasonable or no cost.

3-4 such hubs in every state will motivate people from all parts of the country to start up and with an automatic start-up fund and the hub services, they will have little entry barriers.

"Considering the current scenario we expect that there should be a fast implementation of the procedures to ease startup funding. We also expect a strategic plan to promote AI in various sectors, as this would need close coordination of different ministries with Information Technology ministry and tech startups. The Modi government in Budget 2019 should focus more on Smart cities and Digital India initiative in order to shape the IT infrastructure and increase adoption of technology. As you know the auto sales has gone down to 15% in India because the GST rates were hiked and it directly affected the luxury vehicle makers as well as consumer. So, we hope that government pull the GST tax rates. Lastly we need policies to be implemented for higher use of technology to make systems efficient and transparent," said Rachitta Juneja, CMO Letstrack.

So these are the reactions and expectation from the Indian CEOs and Entrepreneurs from the upcoming Union Budget 2019. Let's see what we are going to get.