The Nagaland Startup Workshop – a one-day event organised by the Department of Industries & Commerce, Nagaland – is set to take place on Wednesday, 23 November, at the De Oriental Grand in Kohima.
The workshop is part of the Accelerating Startup Calibre & Entrepreneurial Drive (ASCEND) series, organised in collaboration with Startup India – a flagship initiative of the Government of India – under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
The main focus of the workshop is to create awareness and sensitise the youths and the start-ups in the state on the initiatives under Startup India.
Another aim is to provide knowledge on business compliances with the DPIIT bringing in experts to teach the students and start-ups on types of businesses and business compliance knowledge.
The workshop will also feature a session on HNI awareness.
High Net-Worth Individuals (HNIs), a term used in the financial services sector, widely refer to those individuals whose investible assets exceed a certain figure (or in simpler terms, a very rich investor).
According to an official from the Industry and Commerce department, the HNI awareness session is aimed at targeting “a few HNIs in the state so that they realise the importance of HNIs investing in our own start-ups.”
“Entrepreneurship is the need of the hour right now,” the official said. “[It] is the way to create employment, direct and indirect, and contribute to the state’s economy.”
Since the Startup Nagaland Policy was notified in 2019, a series of awareness programmes across various districts and in schools have been organised by the Department of Industries & Commerce.
In addition, Startup Nagaland works with incubators such as YouthNet, Educentre, Nagaland Tool Room & Training Centre and National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT).
An incubator is any organisation that supports entrepreneurial ventures in accelerating their growth and success.
These incubators help develop the start-ups with marketing and also to build their prototype through business and technology, which in turn helps the start-ups to get connections to do business networking.
The Startup Policy has two incentives and the Nagaland Startup portal, which allows start-ups in the state to register online and apply for recognition under Startup Nagaland.
During the workshop, the new revised Startup Nagaland portal will also be launched, where several new initiatives have been introduced.
The Industry and Commerce department has invited start-ups, aspiring start-ups and students from different institutions to attend the workshop, along with some business associations and HNIs.
The ASCEND series workshops are being organised in all eight states of the Northeast. The workshops were held in Mizoram and Meghalaya on 15 November and in Sikkim on 21 November.
The Industries and Commerce Department has set up Entrepreneurship Development Centres (EDCs) in education institutions across Nagaland to promote start-up culture, providing critical facilities like plug-n-play working space and internet connectivity along with research and testing labs to support innovators to scale up their ideas.
