How Karnataka is enabling social enterprises: in conversation with Gaurav Gupta

The Karnataka government launched its updated Startup Policy during the Invest Karnataka 2016—Global Investors Meet to boost entrepreneurship in the state. The policy, which was meant to enable the growth of 20,000 technology-based startups, including 6,000 product startups by 2020, has seen 20 firms registering every day in the last few months of 2016, according to Gaurav Gupta, Principal Secretary, Department of IT, BT, Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka.

At the state government’s recent startup initiative ELEVATE 100, meant to discover innovative startups, the department has been providing them support and has invested in 61 startups in the past four months.

Speaking to YourStory, Gupta pointed out the need for social entrepreneurship ventures and talked about the steps they need to take to become commercially viable. There is a dire need for them to find viable solutions for public health problems, sewage management and Bengaluru’s traffic problems. The government has partnered with both educational bodies and industry bodies to give social enterprises a boost, Gupta said. Here are edited excerpts of the interview.

Enter the SocialStory Photography contest and show us how people are changing the world! Win prize money worth Rs 1 lakh and more. Click here for details!