PANJIM: Nearly 20 days have passed since the 13 registered start-ups of Goa were given the billboard cheques by Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant and Information and Technology (IT) Minister Jennifer Monserrate on the inaugural day of the Vibrant Goa event. However, the real cheques, or even money being transferred electronically to their respective bank accounts, are yet to materialise.
Even though the IT Department was awarded the best-designed stall at Vibrant Goa, the deliverables are yet to be seen, making the start-ups nervous as their financial plans are going awry due to this inordinate delay.
Several documents have been signed and all paper work has been completed by the start-ups, which has taken over six months. The indemnity agreement was signed a week after the
billboard cheques were distributed in front of the Director General of Software Technology Parks of India (STPI).
“Our seed capital funding application for our RPi-4-Schools project was submitted more than 13 months ago, evaluated by a panel five months ago and approved 2.5 months ago. Yet these funds have not reached our company bank account to enable us to scale up our RPi-4-Schools work to the planned next levels. If not for our crowd-funding campaign and some CSR support, our project would have been dead by now. Such long delays and uncertainty in the implementation of the 2.5 year old Goa IT/Start-up policy is seriously detrimental to promotion of much-needed entrepreneurship among Goans today,” Vincent Toscano, Managing Partner of Uzoorba Technologies LLP, Chorao told Herald.
He added, “Goa government must do whatever it takes to bring in clarity, efficiency and transparency in its handling of such important matters. We hope things will drastically improve here on.”
President of the Goa Technology Association (GTA), Mangirish Salelkar said, “Start-ups that have received big dummy cheques and grants, should firmly follow up with Department of IT to see the real money in their bank accounts. Or else, this will simply turn out to be another event for photo ops to prove that some support has been given to budding entrepreneurs in the State. I hope Goa government will prove to be better than Andhra Pradesh government, which has failed to give prize money to winning start-ups which were announced a year ago.”
Meanwhile, with transfers taking place in this department, recently Ankita Anand has been given additional charge as CEO of the Start-up Promotion Cell, and the start-us now hope that things will start moving in the department at a faster pace.
