NASSCOM President Debjani Ghosh throws light on ‘Layoffs to get worse’
By MYBRANDBOOK
NASSCOM has released a survey on the impact of COVID-19 on India’s startup ecosystem in May. The survey has found that 70 percent of domestic startups, primarily early and mid-stage ones have a cash runway of less than three months.
40 percent of startups have either temporarily paused operations or are on the verge of shutting down. As NASSCOM focusses on entry-level and mid-level startups, it conducted a pulse survey with 250+ startups in this segment. More than 90 percent of startups said their revenues are going down, two-thirds believe this impact will last for 12 months.
The survey drew a range of reactions from within the ecosystem. To a news source, Debjani Ghosh, President of NASSCOM, says, “When we published the survey, there were two types of reactions. Our team was flooded with calls from startups saying ‘Thank you for giving us a voice. Everyone was talking about MSMEs, large companies, and they assumed that startups will survive.’ We also got a lot of concerned calls from VCs saying that this can’t be true. ‘What is happening and we are not seeing this’. We realised that they didn’t get the context of the survey. VCs are typically focussed on the top-level of startups, which have funding and are going through cost rationalisation. But the angel investors were tremendously happy to see the research.”
When the Centre announced a Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package for an “Aatmanirbhar Bharat”, there was no mention of startups in the plan. While the ecosystem is certainly hopeful that the government will announce some startup-specific provisions to help them, the NASSCOM President says that they are also working with ministries to understand the startup segment. The regulatory body has also made a range of recommendations to help startups. These include getting refunds, exemption from taxes, ESOP relaxations, a fund for deep-tech innovations, and more. Debjani throws more light on the survey findings, the trials and tribulations of startups, potential measures that the government could take in the current crisis, the future of remote work, and key learnings from the pandemic.
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