BW Businessworld in association with NewsX organised a roundtable discussion on the forthcoming budget with a focus on startups, IT and the services sector.
The participants in the session were: Anil Chhikara, Principal, Jaarvis Accelerator; Karan Aggarwal, Executive Director - BLS International; Amalendu Mukherjee, MD, Fourth Dimension Solutions; and Noor Warsia, Editor, Marketing and Advertising, BW Businessworld.
The discussion was moderated by Athar Khan, a News X anchor. He opened the session to views and opinions about the pre-budget expectations from various representatives of IT, services and startups. Khan said, "2016 wasn't a really good year, with sentimental changes in the government's vision, with demonetisation and the US President Donald Trump's repeated threats to many developing countries. What do you think about 2017?"
Anil Chhikara of Jaarvis Accelerator said, "Yes, there is no denying of the fact that startups are going to be affected and they are small businesses. Also, 2016 was more a look back on the intentions of the government and startup India campaign but whether we like it on not, digitisation has to be adopted across India."
Karan Aggarwal, Sr. VP, BLS International, said, "IT sector is being developed in India. TCS revenue doubled because of the government support. Also, there will be more job opportunities for people. The budget should also allocate states the revenues, set tax limits along with subsidies in the first instance itself so as to avoid any conflicts or rat race later."
When asked how demonetization affected IT and what are their expectations from the budget, Amalendu Mukherjee, MD, Fourth Dimension Solutions, said, "Demonetisation has hardly affected IT sector and it has been continuously growing. With the budget launch, we are expecting the scalability and development of the IT and services and looking for the new opportunities in this sector with the help of government."
Noor Warsia talked about the gaps the government failed to look after, such as investments in the hardware sector, supporting the startups in a retrospective manner and not only those who launched in 2015 or 2016.
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