Budget 2022 Expectations LIVE Updates: There are a lot of expectations from Budget 2022 as people from various walks are pinning high hopes on the Modi government’s decisions and announcements on various sectors.
Budget 2022 Expectations LIVE Updates: The Union Budget 2022-23 is all set to be presented by the Union Finance & Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on 1st February, 2022 in Paperless form. This is the 4th Budget of the PM Narendra Modi-led NDA government in its second tenure. The Budget 2022 will be presented around 11 am on 1st February 2022.
To mark the final stage of the Union Budget making process, sweets were provided to the core staff due to undergo “lock-in” at their workplaces, instead of a customary Halwa ceremony every year in view of the prevailing pandemic situation and the need to observe health safety protocols.
Union Budget of 2021-22
-In a historic move, the Union Budget of 2021-22 was delivered in paperless form for the first time.
– A “Union Budget Mobile App” was also launched for hassle-free access of Budget documents by Members of Parliament (MPs) and the general public.
Union Budget 2022-23
-The Union Budget 2022-23 would also be available on the Mobile App after the process of Budget presentation has been completed on 1st February 2022 in the Parliament.
Union Budget: Mobile App
– The mobile App allows complete access to 14 Union Budget documents, including the Budget Speech, Annual Financial Statement (commonly known as Budget), Demand for Grants (DG), Finance Bill etc. as prescribed by the Constitution.
– The mobile app is bilingual (English & Hindi) and is available on both Android and iOS platforms.
– The App can also be downloaded from the Union Budget Web Portal (www.indiabudget.gov.in). The budget documents will also be available for download by the general public on Union Budget Web Portal (www.indiabudget.gov.in).
Budget 2022 Expectations
There are a lot of expectations from Budget 2022 as people from various walks are pinning high hopes on the Modi government’s decisions and announcements on various sectors.
Here are all the LIVE updates on Budget 2022 Expectations:-
Vaibhav Agrawal, CIO & Founder, Teji Mandi
The 2021 budget was a hallmark event as it focused on reviving aggressive growth in India, without much concern for the fiscal deficit. With direct tax collection of 9.5 lac crores and GST collection of 10.7 lac crores till December, this maybe one of the few times in India’s history that we actually do better than the fiscal deficit target for the year! Furthermore, this year’s budget would be important to continue the government’s stance last year by focusing on reviving the investment cycle in India through government spending in infrastructure and capex and housing. Furthermore, incentives to revive corporate capex will also be watched keenly as investment cycle can have a multiplier effect on India’s economy. Furthermore, impetus on green energy and electrification of the automobile sector would also likely be a big focus of the current government. Sectors to focus on would be banking, automobile OEMs and ancilliaries benefiting from move to electric, and companies in electronics sector.
P C Kandpal, MD & CEO, SBI General Insurance
“The pandemic has been a catalyst in raising awareness around the need for health insurance, however India continues to remain under-penetrated insurance market. To bring a change in this scenario, we believe considering the ease on taxes and increasing the tax exemption under 80D especially on health insurance premium, can help boost a bit of penetration. Apart from impacting health insurance, considering the increasing natural catastrophes, we also anticipate that segments that are impacted by economic losses if are mandated to opt for fire and property insurance, it can reduce the burden of economic losses.”
Martin Schwenk, Managing Director & CEO, Mercedes-Benz India
“The Union Budget should aim at long-term holistic growth for the auto industry prioritizing job creation, infrastructure development, introduction of latest technologies and increased de-carbonization efforts. With stable policies and a clear roadmap for the sector, an accelerated growth can be achieved transitioning the industry swiftly into the emerging e-mobility era, putting Indian auto industry on the global map. A relook into the existing taxation structure with a clear focus on the direct tax changes to boost consumption, export promotion, direct job creation and promotion of digitization is highly desired. Continued government spending on infrastructure projects would further propel demand for both the passenger and commercial vehicles.”
Parag Raja, MD & CEO, Bharti AXA Life Insurance
The ongoing pandemic has made Indians realise the importance of term insurance for the safety and security of their family. With the current level of under-penetration, the key task at hand is to make this significant financial protection tool more affordable for the masses and lucrative for taxpayers. We therefore propose to ease off the tax burden of 18% on term insurance policies and bring down the GST rate in the range of 2-5% to benefit end users.
For many years, life insurance is clubbed u/s 80C and the maximum tax benefit of Rs. 1,50,000 that an individual can avail gets divided with Pension Fund, NSC, PPF, SCSS, ELSS Mutual Funds, 5 years Bank FDs and Post Office Deposits. We propose a separate section under the income tax act which allows individuals to opt for an additional deduction over and above 80C for investing in a Life Insurance policy. With an increase in re-insurance premiums amidst the pandemic, there is also a need to provide enhanced deduction for insurance premium irrespective of the taxation regime opted by individuals/ HUF. This will reduce the social security burden of the Government.”
Abhishek Soni, CEO & Co-Founder, Tax2win.in
“Budget 2022 is around the corner and all taxpayers are expecting some good announcements.
From the upcoming budget, it is expected to increase the basic exemption limit which was last revised in 2017-18. Though this seems to be difficult for the government considering the increased cost due to the vaccination program and other pandemic related effects.
Further, the limit of the standard deduction for salaried taxpayers are also expected to increase. This is expected to Rs 1 lakh from the existing limit of Rs. 50,000/-.
It is also expected to make the new tax regime more pleasing and beneficial by adding a few more deductions under the new regime.
Few changes are expected for capital gain taxation. Long term capital gain exemption limit can be increased to Rs 2 lakh from the existing limit of Rs. 1 lakh.”
Anil Gupta, Managing Director, CRISTOL (KAPL – Krishna Antioxidants Pvt. Ltd.)
‘The Budget of FY21 by Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman focused on initiatives to boost domestic manufacturing and provide an impetus to exports to aid the growth of the chemical & petrochemical sector. Calibration of customs duty on certain chemicals benefitted domestic manufacturers and paved the way for local brands to enter global markets.
The expectations from the FY 2022 budget are as follows:
1. The budget of FY22 should prioritize investment in infrastructure and provide incentives for investment in solar energy to promote sustainable use of resources.
2. Encourage innovation and promote make in India by offering incentives/tax breaks for investments in R&D and New Product Development.
3. Aim for ease of compliance in GST and Direct Taxation.
4. Prioritize extended credit facilities to MSMEs to provide stimulus to the chemical industry.
5. Provide subsidies for capacity expansion and promote employment.
6. We expect the budget of FY22 to aid easy access to better infrastructure that will allow us to increase the number of exports and import substitution to further develop the chemical industry.”
Honeyy Katiyal, Founder of Investors Clinic
Real estate sector witnessed a strong comeback in 2021, amidst the Covid scenario; sales in housing real estate jumped to almost 90% compared to the pre-Covid sales. Amidst the Covid led challenges, the industry performed exponentially well and has high hopes from the government to support them in this year’s Union budget.
There should be easy availability of finance and reduction in GST rates, so that more consumers can come forward to buy properties. While developers and real estate consultants are pulling consumers through multiple schemes and offers, the government should bring relaxations in tax rates. Tax relief, either through reduction in tax rates or revised tax slabs is a much-needed move for the industry. There is also a need to increase the tax rebate of INR 2 lakh on housing loans, which is highly needed to pull in consumer demand in housing and especially the affordable housing segment.
Shiv Parekh, Founder of hBits
The commercial real estate segment has been growing continuously, contributing to the real estate sector and overall GDP of the country. While a lot of measures are being taken to boost housing real estate, similar measures need to be taken for commercial real estate. As far as commercial real-estate is concerned, the Government should also allow an input tax credit on GST collected from customers on rentals for the properties built for leasing purposes. Government should look at incentivizing developers and occupiers to push for growth and encouraging the sentiments of industry players. Asset classes like warehousing, co-working spaces should also be incentivised, so that more options can be provided to developers and investors.
Dr. Aashish Chaudhry, Managing Director, Aakash Healthcare, Dwarka
“The sudden emergence of Covid-19 prompted the Indian government to nearly double its healthcare budget year over year. As a result, the most prominent area of focus in Budget 2022 is expected to be healthcare. We anticipate that the government of India will increase its healthcare spending in this budget. The last Budget announced a 137% increase in healthcare spending to address some of the gaps. Healthcare accounted for about 1.8 percent of GDP in 2021. We should aim to raise it to at least 2.5 percent of GDP this year. Despite the focus on the Covid-19 pandemic at the moment, it is critical to increase the proportion of spending on preventive healthcare and wellness. Ayushman Bharat is undeniably a positive step toward achieving the goal of universal healthcare; however, more funding is required to ensure its long-term success.”
Sugandh Ahluwalia Chief of Strategy, Indian Spinal Injuries Centre
“As we enter the third year of the pandemic, our expectations for Budget 2022 are for increased spending on healthcare. India’s total healthcare expenditure is significantly lower than that of other countries. The pandemic has highlighted the critical need for high-quality public hospitals. More public-private partnerships, as well as additional investments, are required to strengthen indigenous manufacturing of medical devices, personal protective equipment (PPE), and raw materials for drugs. Hence, the government must allocate more budget for the healthcare industry. Furthermore, higher tax breaks for the private sector to modernize medical facilities will go a long way toward ensuring better healthcare, more investments, and thus more jobs.”
Ajay Harinath Singh, Group Chairman, Darwin Platform Group of Companies (DPGC)
Along with overall policy reforms to keep growth on the fast track, the government is expected to introduce promotional schemes and incentives for a few growth and employment-oriented sectors. Infrastructure, Real Estate, Retail, Health, Manufacturing, and Agriculture sectors need major thrust in the Budget. These sectors can be a force multiplier for growth and increasing investments/ CAPEX cycle. The real Estate and retail sectors have forward and backward linkages and impact over 200 sectors. For infrastructure, the industry has a major problem with non-fund-based credit such as bank guarantees (BG) as it blocks a significant portion of project costs. A holistic view on resolving BGs or Insurance Surety Bonds is needed.
Retail in India is a trillion-dollar industry, employing an estimated 5 crore workforce. Ease of doing business, a National Retail Trade Policy, Access to affordable credit, Measures to reduce logistics costs and raw materials would help the sector. Income generation and employment need to be focus areas.
For a robust public health system, the government needs to spend three times more than what it is spending currently (1.2 percent of GDP). We will be expecting a doubling of the health sector budget this time. For higher investments, the private sector should be encouraged with a rational policy push.
Ram Raheja, Director at S Raheja Realty:
“Expectations from the upcoming budget are high as the industry is expecting big announcements and policy support for the real estate sector. More tax sops and higher relief on the home loan rates will woo a broader segment of home buyers and investors to buy property. The existing tax exemption on housing loans should be raised to give impetus to buyer sentiment. There is a specific need for income tax relief on a second home which will benefit home buyers in a big way and also stimulate the real estate sector.
The budget can also support the industry by ensuring reduction in compliance issues. It should also strengthen the existing financing systems to provide liquidity, as developers need a rational capital flow to keep up the work process. We are also hoping for GST reforms, as this will reduce overall property cost and push demand for homes, granting of industry status to the overall real estate sector and implementation of single window clearance amongst others. We are looking forward to more initiatives to enhance ease of doing business for the developers.”
Shashank Patidar, Co-founder, WeSkill
Although the K12 education landscape has completely changed in the past two years, there still exist certain gaps that must be bridged to ensure quality education is accessible to all. Online education is here to stay and the government should assist in ways through which equal learning opportunities are accessible to learners all across the country.
In the upcoming Union Budget 2022, we would expect the government to invest in bolstering the learning infrastructure through incentives for greater device and internet access across all regions, especially for the suburban and rural population. Another high priority this year should be the effective implementation of the NEP on a large scale, with special incentives for educational institutions for successfully implementing the policy. Furthermore, the government must also consider investing more in curriculum development and revision to ensure that the curriculum taught is not just in line with the demands of the current times but also shapes students’ futures by increasing their employability quotient.
Kushal Raj Chakravorty, Founder, Lotus Petal Foundation
“The country has never spent on education the 6% of GDP as recommended by every national policy since 1968. In fact almost Rs. 5000 cr taken away from school education in FY 2021-22 was disheartening. The disruption caused in school education by the pandemic requires out-of-the-box thinking to mitigate its long-term impact on the nation’s development. The NEP 2020, a cornerstone for the way forward, stood out with its foresight and ahead of the curve ideas. The same rigor will be needed in due investment in the infrastructure, giving digital access to the teachers and children, and enhancing teaching capacity and capability. We look forward to a higher allocation to education in the areas needed in a post-pandemic system.
Raju Kapoor Director, Corporate Affairs, FMC India
Indian agriculture has proved its resilience by achieving a 3.4% growth despite the raucous pandemic. The forthcoming budget must look to leverage the resilience to enable the growth of agriculture by more than 4% in the coming few years, while being more environmentally responsible. There are certain crucial aspects to be considered for this transformation. Setting up a National Agriculture Council on the lines of GST council, comprising of centre and state representatives along with the representatives of the private Food and Agriculture sector to drive long term strategy can prove to be the stepping stone. Incentivising access to formal banking and financial services basis good loan repayment practices will help in uplifting the current state by means of enhancing the credit availability to agriculture to beyond Rs. 18 Lakh Crore at affordable interest rates for farmers and farm level processing infrastructure, instead of being consumed by corporates. Alongside, incentivising the private sector players in agriculture who handhold the formation and growth of FPOs/FPCs by offering tax breaks on such substantiated investments can be beneficial in the longer run. Further, upgrading the quality control infrastructure across the country to ensure availability of quality inputs to farmers and agriculture produce to processors and consumers will strengthen the backbone of Indian agriculture.
As the farmers look to navigate through the pandemic, bringing down the GST levied on agricultural inputs to a maximum of 8% and exemption of income tax on the investments being made by agricultural sector companies can be substantial considering agricultural extension is critical to technology adoption. Following that up, incomes three times the investment in R&D each year must be exempted from income tax levy.
The upcoming budget can additionally provide special incentives for R&D, manufacturing, training and certification of precision agriculture mechanization including drones to encourage sustainable agriculture and developing India as a small holder farmers’ precision agriculture hub. To further the support, linking the PM Kisan Nidhi for purchase of advanced inputs by the farmers and decontrolling fertilisers from subsidy and starting a DBT system for bonafide farmers to enhance efficiency can be probable solutions. Having the technical grade pesticides import classification changed from the existing chapter 3808 HSN code to HSN 2909 aligned to the global norms can also iron out the supply chain for the Indian agriculture.
Abhishek Goenka, Head and CIO, RPSG Capital Ventures
We have had a fantastic 2021 from the startup ecosystem perspective, and with further Government support this growth could reach new heights. This could include simplification of GST rules with respect to availing of credits and monthly procedural requirements. Also an offset of capital gains by investing in other startups could help boost investments and contribute to the growth of the overall startup ecosystem.
Karan Shaha, Co-Founder and CEO, Vahak
The Indian logistics sector has grown by leaps and bounds and will play the role of enabler in achieving the goal of becoming the world’s third largest economy by 2030. As we enter the new normal of post-pandemic businesses, and scaling up of domestic manufacturing, the logistics sector requires major investment from the government in infrastructure building. Expressways, warehousing hubs, inland waterways as well as dedicated freight corridors are some of the major and urgent infrastructural needs that will support the manufacturing and retail sectors. Greater funding has to be provided for rural connectivity, and setting up of technology-driven logistics operations across the country. Automation of various paper-based processes, funding support for adoption of EVs by transporters and simplification of business processes are some of the other major improvements that we expect the government to pay attention to, in the upcoming budget.
Rajat Gupta, Founder & CEO, TESSOL
The Cold Chain storage sector has been one of the most underdeveloped sectors in India. Considering the long term vision of reducing food spoilage and growing the retail sector in India, building the cold chain is a mandatory requirement. The sector has started gaining attention during the pandemic due to the increased demand for vaccination as well as food storage and delivery. The Indian cold chain industry has a long journey to cover. From the upcoming budget, we expect
– Lower GST rates for cold chain products to encourage encourage entrepreneurs in the cold chain industry to bring in more solutions and new innovations benefitting the associated sectors like pharmaceutical companies, e-commerce, FPOs as well as end consumers.
– Input tax credit to tranporters who invest in cold chain and commodities under 5% GST regime like restaurants.
– Subsidy on environmentally sustainable solutions along the lines of Indian Cooling action plan for promotion of those technologies.
– Promotion of locally manufactured products in the refrigerated storage and transport industry by through subsidy on manufacturing and R&D investments.
– Consider a reduction in import duties for critical components like compressors that is essential for cold chain solution providers in India.
This will not only motivate the cold chain companies but will also enable building of a robust cold chain infrastructure in India.
Rishabh Khanna, Cognitive Scientist and Co-founder of Suraasa
“The world has seen a change in the way we live. Education specifically has taken a new direction that has made technology based learning, whether online or blended, indispensable for our education systems. Over 1 crore teachers of the country have pushed themselves to embed technology in their teaching systems and they need support in developing their capability on new age teaching methods. I think that we should allocate a part of this education budget specifically to solve this need. After all, teachers are leaders in a classroom and our students can learn effectively only if teachers are able to interact with them on the same wavelength.
The education budget this year could define the way forward for us as a country and for the entire education system. Looking forward to the union budget.”
Abhijit Shanbhag, President and CEO, Graymatics
The Government of India must focus on technology-driven transformation of the country in the years ahead, and the union budget is a great starting point. We are now moving into an era where touchless technologies, remote monitoring and surveillance have become necessary in various use cases. In this regard, companies that focus on developing smart technology driven solutions need to be backed by the authorities. Supporting research and software development, and manufacturing of technology-driven products through funding and infrastructure is a key need today. We hope that through higher budgetary allocation for smart city projects and supporting innovative tech such as video AI, the government will move forward to the goal of digital India.
Tapan Barman, Co-Founder and CEO, Mihup
Despite the continued challenges posed by the pandemic, we witnessed good recovery momentum across industries in 2021. Now, it is time to build further through right financial support in the Union Budget. With Aatmanirbhar Bharat becoming a clarion call, it is time to further simplify the process of taxation and investment. Indian tech startups did very well in the year gone by, and now the need is for incentive and financial support for developing innovative technologies, software and solutions that can be beneficial for different sectors in capacity building and efficiency. Governmental support to startups will generate more revenue and employment across the country. As India aims to become one of the leading manufacturing hubs in the world, we must also pay great attention to the software and technology development sector. Just like the IT and outsourcing industry, Indian SaaS companies will generate a lot of foreign exchange through export of technology products. The government must also make budgetary considerations for infrastructure and talent development for the IT industry alongside financial and regulatory support.
Ankit Kedia, Founder and Lead Investor, Capital A
Private sector investors rallied behind the Indian startups in 2021, and the momentum augurs well for the plans to become a $5 trillion economy. However, the government needs to play a much bigger role in supporting investments from foreign countries. One of the major obstacles today is the lack of ease-of-doing-business. India is still not in the top 50 countries of the world on the global list. Our aspiration to be one of the top 3 economies has to be complemented by being one of the best business destinations in the world. We expect the government to take steps to boost technology driven startups and simplify the FDI processes across the sectors.
Varun Goenka, CEO and Co-Founder
Sustainable transportation needs have seen a lot of developments in the EV sector in India. However, the pace of growth is not adequate and it is expected that the government will declare the EV industry to be a priority sector in the Union Budget. So far, various companies have launched electric 2-wheelers with a focus on last-mile connectivity. However, with the growth of business and commercial activities, there has to be a greater emphasis on last-mile delivery. This year, we anticipate a significant growth in the B2C as well as B2B segments. Food delivery companies such as Zomato are moving towards a 100% EV fleet for their operations, and some of the cities such as Gurgaon have declared EV only zones. We expect the government to take policy measures to build more EV zones that will drive the adoption towards such vehicles. Further, strengthening of initiatives such as infrastructure and financial support to EV manufacturing, charging and battery swapping service providers to augment operations are also anticipated in the upcoming budget.
Runam Mehta, CEO, HealthCube
The Indian health-tech sector proved its potential to the fullest in 2021 and played a major role in containing the pandemic. India’s dependence on medical device import is one of the reasons behind the lack of adequate technology development and deployment across the country. We hope the government will make sufficient budgetary allocations towards development of new tools and technology and manufacturing of cutting-edge portable diagnostic, remote monitoring and telemedicine equipment. There is also a need for government-private collaboration in development and usage of advanced software-based solutions in rural healthcare delivery and preventive diagnostic services. Investments in the arena should be simplified, and there is an urgent need to incentivize and provide infrastructural support to companies developing the right solutions. Reduction of import duty on critical components required by the device manufacturers is another urgent area of attention. We hope the government takes care of these concerns and backs domestic medical device manufacturers.
Deepak Nair, Co-Founder and COO at 10club,
India has seen a phenomenal digital transformation in the last couple of years. In 2022, we foresee continued growth in categories such as home, fitness and sport, which we are excited to see unfold. Accelerating the “Make in India” initiative and investments in ramping up the nation’s supply chain capabilities along with credit support for MSMEs will stimulate the economy at multiple levels.
Arun Bagaria, Co-Founder, TravClan
During the last two years, the travel industry in India has been strongly impacted by the pandemic. The fact that international tourism which is a key revenue source for all domestic as well as international travel agents in India, remains suspended, has caused financial stress for most players. It is widely believed that 2022 will see resumption and steady growth of the entire travel sphere. However, the need of the hour is for the government to take steps that encourage people to travel, and help hospitality and travel companies to earn more revenues. Waiver of GST on travel services and financial support to hotels/transportation providers can be a major boost to the travel sector in India. Startups can be incentivized for tech adoption and provided with financial support to develop travel technologies and innovative service platforms. The Government of India also needs to make allocations towards promoting India as a post-pandemic global travel destination.
Rishubh Satiya, Co-Founder, Plix
The D2C ecosystem has enabled a large number of sustainable, small-scale companies, manufacturing units and startups to enter the retail landscape and compete with large multinational companies which have been dominant so far. The ability to sell online and through brand outlets without the constraints of conventional multi-layered ecosystems, democratizes the market. It also gives brands such as Plix the ability to reach the target audiences as a sustainable brand offering clean, plant-based nutrition to consumers. The upcoming union budget is going to be crucial as the Indian business community is expecting stronger recovery and growth this year. We expect the government to announce strong financial support to the startups and D2C brands in sync with its policy to promote domestic manufacturing. We also expect lowering of GST or other benefits for brands that offer green wellness and nutrition products and support sustainability initiatives.
Ashivini Jakhar, Founder and CEO, Prozo
India’s logistics sector is the dark horse that will propel India towards achieving a $5 trillion economy by 2024-2025. India’s logistics spend as a % of GDP is still among the highest and stands at 13-14%. For developed economies like Japan and USA, this stands at 8-10%. A host of direct and indirect measures are needed to reduce logistics cost, which in turn will fuel the growth of both domestic consumption and exports. Interventions like further easing out norms (e.g. warehouses still need factory license) & processes for setting up warehouses (a streamlined, single-window clearance systems) within the main cities, esp. for setting up Last mile hubs & dark stores, as well as outside city premises for setting up fulfillment centers, has a huge potential to boost the economy. Establishing logistics hubs that facilitate on-demand warehousing for small operators and startups, especially in the non-metro city regions should be provided with funding and easy approvals. Simplifying the land acquisition process and digitizing land records will help in setting up Grade A warehouses. Finalization and effective implementation of the National Logistics Policy, along with focus on creating a skilled workforce for the supply chain industry is important. Indian supply chain startups offering innovative & integrated logistics services should also be given a favorable status in government supply chain digitisation projects, therefore promoting innovation e.g. CWC (Central Warehousing Corporation) could digitize all their warehouses leveraging such services thus further boosting Agri & other supply chain reforms. Other major interventions like easing cross-border commerce, more capex investment in cold storage and promoting the deployment of electric vehicles in the logistics sector will enable the growth of this sector and economy.
Sanjay Vinayak, Founder and CEO, Connect and Heal
The Indian healthcare system has been dealing with its biggest challenge. As we move into a scenario where COVID-19 could become endemic with highs and lows from time to time, it is important to ready the ecosystem for the future. In this context, we hope the Government of India will take some key fiscal steps, beginning with simplification of GST conditions for all healthcare providers. Any organization delivering, facilitating, or coordinating healthcare services should be provided exemption from GST even if they are not clinical establishments themselves. Streamlining of these issues is critical for modern healthcare companies. Apart from this, the primary healthcare sector continues to suffer from financial challenges. There is a need to qualify primary healthcare credit as priority sector lending for Banks. This is essential as the private sector needs to invest heavily into building a robust infrastructure. Another important area to focus is lower tax regime for the healthcare sector to encourage capital inflow.
Sumit Gwalani, Co- Founder, Fi neo bank
This year’s budget offers an opportunity to shrug off the impact of the third wave and push the economy towards higher growth. Throughout the last year, we’ve seen that more individuals are keen to take part in India’s capital market success. To enable them, digital infrastructure for financial services from banking and payments to credit, investment, and wealth management needs to reach the last mile. While the Reserve Bank of India has set the regulatory ball rolling for innovations like UPI and Account Aggregator, the Budget can encourage the uptake of these technologies in the financial sector through partnerships with digital service providers either by direct funding or tax incentives. The government has taken strides towards financial inclusion through the implementation of the JAM trinity concept. This in combination with regulatory support in the form of digital banking licenses, fintechs can play a major role in India’s growth trajectory.”
Raghvendra Nath, Managing Director – Ladderup Wealth Management Private Limited
“Over the years we have seen that most Central Governments maintain a good balance between social and economic objectives during the budget. So, I don’t expect this year will be any different. In the last two budgets we have seen that the government is actively listening to the industry experts and addressing the gaps in policy and taxation. This budget should ideally further that exercise in bringing industry friendly policies that can bolster overall Economic growth. I feel that the government is keen on expanding the “Make in India” initiative and we should hope that there would be some measures that can enable substantial increase in capital expenditure by the private sector. Infrastructure stays one of the core focus areas for the government and we should expect some announcements related to that along with some positive announcements for the farming sector. The tax collection during the last nine months have been quite robust and much ahead of the budget estimates for the current year. There is a good possibility that the government may have a fiscal deficit number which is lower than the budgeted and that could be a positive surprise.”
Dr Mahesh Gupta Chairman & Founder KENT RO
Due to the Pandemic crisis, the year 2021 was a Complex & complicated one for many sectors.Hence, the government is anticipated to take a stride forward this year in making India a hub for electronic gadget manufacturing and export. And what I have seen is that the consumer durables industry has been dealing with rising raw material costs for more than a year, I think it’s time to go beyond that, We believe that the Union Budget will assist manufacturers reduce costs and enhance customer affordability.
Industry expects that the 2022 budget will include provisions to enhance the overall system and implement forward-thinking initiatives such as “Make in India” and “Digital India.” Also, tax reductions on environmentally friendly and energy-efficient items should be considered, as this could help to raise demand and customer acceptance of sustainable products.
Aditya Mehta, CEO & Co-Founder Akasa Co-working
“Whenever faced with a problem, humanity always tends to bounce back with vigor and innovation. This is what 2021 showed us with a steep rise in demand for co-working spaces which is the perfect solution for mitigating the workspace costs. Moving into 2022, it is expected that the government will foster newborn start-ups entering the co-working space. With co-working on the cards, every possible tax exemption would go a long way for this industry.”
Ashutosh Valani, Co-Founder and Director, Renee Cosmetics
Given that India does not have any shortage in the circulation of capital in the startup ecosystem. Thereby, the government will invest time to decide how to bring changes that can successfully eradicate unique challenges faced by various sectors of startups. The Union Budget meeting is around the corner, and it will decide the allocation given to different startups groups accordingly. Subsequently, the meeting raises high expectations among business owners about how and from what they can benefit. In 2021, India will witness a massive boost in its startup ecosystem. Last year, the startup industry accumulated over $36 billion in funds, wherein 40 startups achieved the unicorn title.
Likewise, the beauty industry prevailed through the pandemic, as the Indian cosmetics market is on track to reach 4.23% of CAGR from 2020 to 2025. With such a high success rate on the horizon, it is evident that the beauty industry needs to be a priority on the union government’s list for the fiscal year of 2022-2023. Here are some of the beauty industry’s expectations from the union budget meeting.
The digitalisation of the industry
Digitalisation was the most prominent trend that arose from the two subsequent years of living in a pandemic. It showed the world how several sectors could thrive regardless of that, even with strict lockdowns and curfews. The virtual means were primarily enough to land products and services to the consumers. The beauty industry could adapt more through technology and the digital world. Innovations came into play when more people were available to view their social media platforms, advertisements and attractive online sales that gave exposure to the brand content.
It helped the beauty market keep up with the new trends while experimenting with new products. For instance, the production of colour cosmetics increased tremendously, while makeup products for eyes, lips and facial categories are selling the most. Customers were able to engage better with the products in mobile apps through its virtual try-on feature. Furthermore, the vertical specialist companies on top of the beauty industry hierarchy are garnering hundreds of more brands due to high exposure on the internet. The rise of e-commerce significantly affected the beauty industry. Hence, to keep up with the fashion government deciding on allocating towards e-commerce and digitalisation of the economy is anticipated by the beauty industry.
Incorporation of AI and VR in Startups
Incorporating artificial Intelligence is another branch of technology that can benefit e-tallying beauty products companies. It can portray how the revolutionary government initiatives will be during the union budget meeting. Adopting AI technology can help overcome several challenges faced in small to medium size e-tallying companies. Most beauty brands have websites that require continuous customer service and telecommunication. AI technology such as Chatbots help provides personalised and attentive customer services. As primarily beauty products get purchased through the internet, Chatbots offer immediate service to their aid. For noting queries, instructions, or preferences of the customers etc., AI is helpful, and it gives a more accessible alternative to customer communication. Features like big data analytics further help collect the information acquired from Chatbots and enhance their website experience. AR/VR also provides help in product preview processes by allowing customers to have a virtual makeup sample utilising the camera, microphone or 360 videos before making a purchase. In response to the many benefits of advanced tech, startups are forwardly pursuing the government to assign a sufficient allocation so that even small businesses can optimally adopt these services.
Incentivise Vegan and Organic brands
Building a niche for products is the most challenging task for the beauty community. But it is vital as the industry is highly competitive and selling niche-oriented quality products helps robust the market. Besides coloured cosmetics products, ayurvedic and organic makeup brands are highly popular in India. Customers are attracted to innovative skin products that are cruelty-free (not tested on animals), vegan (have no animal-derived ingredients), and vegetarian (free from by-products of animal slaughter). Skin brands applying such formulas in their products are exploding worldwide and filling their space in the Indian market. Besides, India’s ministry of health & family had already banned cosmetic testing on animals in 2014, under the existing drugs and cosmetic rules, 1945.
Furthermore, the advancement of vegan products is good for the environment. Therefore, they are getting extra attention from the consumers. The government can incentivise vegan and vegetarian makeup products to motivate other brands to opt for the practice. Because there is a high inflation rate between vegan and regular beauty products, often it deters consumers from opting for better quality. Hence, assigned funds for the production of animal-free products is much required by beauty startups to prevent the process of animal slaughter without affecting the service revenue.
There is rising awareness of beauty products among the population. The youth is embracing the personal grooming trends and thereby changing the product consumption patterns. Apart from self-grooming motives, consumer consciousness indicates that people buying products are curious to learn the ingredients and how they affect the surroundings. People are avoiding chemical elements and inclining towards skin products that are paraben-free, organic, and vegan, leading companies to abandon such practices that were a cost-cutting solution. With a proper budget assigned by the government, skincare and beauty product companies will afford to make better quality products.
Sudhesh Chandrasekar, Chief Financial Officer, slice
” The NBFC sector has witnessed liquidity crunch in the last few years. Therefore, boosting the liquidity flow to fintechs and smaller NBFCs focused on consumer credit would be key to reviving economic growth and putting the economy back on a double-digit growth rate trajectory. In a bid to ease lending, the government also could promote banks to specifically fund fintechs and smaller NBFCs which are furthering financial inclusion in the retail segment. Another welcome move could be the Extension of tax sops on MLDs which has the potential to increase the flow of capital to the fintech space. The government’s policies can also be helpful in promoting the flow of overseas capital by easing the requirements and thresholds for Indian debt instruments. Similar to credit guarantee schemes for Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs), I’m hoping the Government would look at credit guarantee schemes to retail borrowers to boost retail demand.”
Vishal Bali, Executive Chairperson, Asia Healthcare Holdings
“ The multiple waves of the pandemic are exposing India’s demand – supply gap in healthcare across infrastructure, people, technology. Budget 2022 must remain focused on increased allocation to the healthcare sector and fast track the bridging of the gap. Public healthcare spending on healthcare needs needs urgent reform and a clear allocation of 2.5% of GDP in real terms and not under a consolidation of allocations to various schemes and depts related to health and sanitation. Strengthing Primary Healthcare both at urban and rural level with allocation and execution should be a key priority to develop the tiered healthcare system of the country. The Govt’s push for financing healthcare infrastructure development can also be aided through the issuance of GOI backed healthcare bonds. Indigenisation of medical technology needs more steps under the Make in India program both for local and international players to make India a manufacturing hub for medical technologies. In addition to this, reinstatement of the weighted deduction for R&D expenditure to encourage innovation of new products and technologies, particularly in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry should become the need of the hour for the country. Technology enablement has the power to redefine healthcare access in India, last mile connectivity acceleration can create a new power of disease surveillance, population healthcare data management and enablement of healthcare services and products. The Government should also look at accelerating rural internet connectivity to support education and healthcare services. The pandemic has shown that the need for health insurance for the citizens is imperative, to accelerate the penetration of health insurance further the Union Budget 2022 should also introduce a higher provision for tax deduction under section 80D. Budget 2022 should continue the path of transformation of healthcare for India and ensure that it continues to be a national priority “
Rakesh Saraf – Founder and Director, Windsor Digital
“Our humble suggestion to the Hon’ble Finance Minister is based on the imposition of indirect taxes, specifically GST. The Government has been fortunate, as has the country in general with the huge increase (circa 25%, we are given to understand) in the collections of GST during this fiscal. Many MSME businesses, like ours, do suffer from high rates of GST and its impact on our earnings is huge.
In order to boost the performance of MSMEs, our government should focus on sector specific reduction in GST rates for a few months, in order for MSME businesses to be able to invest the additional funds they are left with, in further growth. It will help both the MSME segment as well as, eventually, the country at large. Our specific ask is for our GST rates to be cut from 18% ad valorem to 12% ad valorem for a period of just 6 months. It will give impetus to our growth and allow us to re-invest the additional resources in growth.”
Diwakar Chittora, CEO and Founder, IntelliPaat
Last year the budget for the education sector was slashed by 6% and the funds were rerouted towards healthcare. We expect that it will increase this year. The pandemic has had a huge impact on the education sector as well and even though NEP 2020 did give online learning a push, there is still a huge digital divide. Funds need to be allocated to overcome this and make sure the digital infrastructure needs are met.
The EdTech sector is still struggling with the 18% GST slab, and we look forward to it being reduced to 5% as this will help in creating affordability for quality education that will eventually lead to higher employability.
In my view, education is the biggest weapon for a country to grow and become a world leader. I see a lot of government projects/ schemes towards upskilling but still a lot more needs to be done.
Education loans /NBFC providing loans are another aspect that we expect some relaxation in. The interest on education loans or towards learning new skills for students needs to be reduced
Sonam Srivastava, Founder at Wright Research, SEBI Registered Investment Advisor
*Union Budget 2022: Here are 8 things that Finance Minister has to focus on in the upcoming Budget*
The 2022 Budget will be looked at from two critical angles. First, the expectation of a boost to economic growth through capital expenditure, and second, the ability to contain fiscal deficit in the increasingly uncertain global economy. Medium & Small Industries, Agriculture, and the consumer sector are still struggling from the repercussions of the pandemic led lockdowns which need stimulus. On the other hand, if the fiscal deficit is not under control Indian economy could be in trouble when the US Fed raises interest rates. This year, the Government exceeded tax collection but fell drastically short of divestment targets, giving a high fiscal deficit. In the following year, the government should target meeting the divestment targets, providing a boost to Infrastructure to revive the economy, and providing relief to consumption-led sectors struggling after the pandemic.
Our critical expectations for various sectors are as follows:
*Infrastructure*
Governments worldwide are doing increasing infrastructure push to build back better after the pandemic, and many believe that increased Infrastructure investment is the way forward. Even the finance minister has hinted at a boost to the Capex cycle. We expect the infrastructure budget to increase by 15-20%, and investments under the National Infrastructure Pipeline will increase. Focus on highways, border infrastructure, metros, and railways is expected. In addition, steps to provide long-term funds to infrastructure projects and a better framework for dispute resolution are expected.
The real estate sector that is showing strength also expects incentives on taxes (both principal and interest) for home loans, on the rental housing segment, and extension of concessions on income from renting of housing properties. In addition, a boost of REITs and better regulations for bankruptcy and insolvency resolution is also expected.
*Divestment*
Unfortunately, the government fell short of the divestment target of this year by a significant margin. Therefore, even though there is news that the Government might push the LIC IPO within this FY to meet the targets, if LIC goes through this year, the government could keep the target for next year lower; otherwise, the target would be as aggressive as this year. Apart from LIC, the significant divestment planned is in BPCL, BEML Ltd, Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd, Pawan Hans, and Shipping Corp. of India.
*Banking*
The banking sector has received a sizable infusion of 3-3.6 trillion in PSUs in the last six years. As a result, the NPAs are reducing, and the credit books of the Banks are expanding. But support to the NBFC sector that accounts for 25% of the credit in the country is expected. Clarity is expected on the privatization of public sector banks. In addition, measures are expected to provide more transparency and scalability to National Asset Reconstruction Company NARCL and Indian Debt Resolution Company Limited IDRCL, which help resolve the non-performing performing assets.
*Healthcare*
With the pandemic, the healthcare bills are causing a dent in the consumers’ pockets. While some are expecting tax relief for Covid treatment, others expect an increase in the budgetary funding towards healthcare focusing on the underprivileged. In addition, focus on vaccination and grants to new vaccine development could also be expected.
PLI schemes for API developers, Medical devices, and GST reduction for medicine are also expected.
*Agriculture*
Data has shown that the Farming sector is struggling, and rural demand is slowing down. Also, this being an election year, the government is expected to increase allocation to Agriculture. As a result, fertilizer subsidies due to increased prices are expected.
*MSMEs*
MSMEs have been struggling with pandemic-led lockdowns. The industry hopes for better focus and wants reforms on simsimplifyingT and reduced taxation by reducing GST, cutting down of compliance burden using technology. Other key reforms to increase liquidity in the economy.
*Taxation*
The government may increase the Rs 50,000 standard deduction limit by 30-35% for the salaried employees. This would bring some relief to the working class.
MSMEs expect a reduction in GST rates and other critical reforms for financial inclusion.
Some people expect that the taxation of cryptocurrencies might get announced in this budget.
Various sectors, from healthcare to real estate to Insurance to Hospitality, expect tax relief.
*Renewable and Electric Vehicles*
Industry body PHDCCI in the pre-budget meeting, the Finance Minister, suggested that the budget provide a tax holiday for investments in the electric vehicle sector or reduced taxation. The reduced tax would encourage foreign EV companies to enter India and incentivize local manufacturers to pivot to electric vehicles.
Similarly, Sustainable Energy companies demand credit incentives or subsidized land, power, and funding similar to China.
Ram N Kumar, Founder and CEO, NirogStreet
As we enter the third year of pandemic, it is evident that nurturing the health ecosystem has become an immediate priority especially preventive and immunity building. Also it has to be acknowledged that the dream of Universal Health Coverage is impossible without mainstreaming of Ayurveda healthcare. So there is a need to support, encourage and accelerate accessibility to authentic doctors, good quality medicine development, modern technology solutions and digitization in this field. For the past few years the Government of India has done a lot to promote Ayurveda. Still a lot needs to be achieved and fast. The right provisions in the Union Budget would give boost to the Ayurvedic Healthcare ecosystem. Waiving off or reduction in GST from the current 12% on Ayurvedic medicines would promote the consumption of natural medicines and sustainable healthcare. Allocation of budget for overall development of a future ready healthcare ecosystem which has world class Ayurvedic medical research, development of world class institutions, development of innovative technology solutions and; medicine research and development is desired. We hope that the Union Budget would include focused approach towards accelerating the development of holistic Ayurveda science.
Nakul Pasricha, President, Authentication Solution Providers’ Association (ASPA)
The union budget impacts the narrative for the future of our economy, so the decisions which will be included in the upcoming union budget have become more critical as they will set the precedent for the progress of our COVID hit economy. In the altered dynamics of the economic ecosystem, policy guidelines will have to adapt to and guide with a renewed perspective. Counterfeiting and illicit trade have been hampering the economic well-being of India for a very long time. It hinders the government’s valuable tax revenue in addition to cutting business profits and cheating consumers. The tragic effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the Indian economy and businesses have created an immediate need for more protection enabled by policy framework against counterfeiting to support businesses struggling for survival and revival. Tax and spending policies need to be re-assessed and restructured to create and enable conditions for robust, resilient, and inclusive economic growth. According to sources, the illicit market in seven select manufacturing sectors including mobile phones, FMCG, tobacco, and alcohol have led to a loss of INR 39,239 crore to the Indian exchequer. Apart from socio-economic losses, it is the culprit behind the loss of 16 lakh jobs to youth in FY18. Inclusive and strategic inclusion of anti-counterfeiting and traceability provision in the policy framework can have a huge positive impact on the ecosystem and help the government patch leakage of important resources. National authentication and traceability projects have been trending internationally for some years now, with China, Brazil, Turkey, the USA, and the EU being the pioneers in this area. It has helped these countries to reduce the shadow market in many industries, improved tax collection, and reduced losses incurred by businesses from counterfeit products and illegal trade. As a country, India should also look up these measures to join the league of advanced digital economies.
Col. Manbeer Choudhary, Chairman cum Managing Director, Jewels Group of Hotels
The hospitality and restaurant industry have been the worst hit during the two years of pandemic. As things started to pick up a little bit, we are hit by yet another disturbing wave of the virus. Needless to say that again it is adversely affecting businesses and livelihood of people working in the industry. The industry is keenly looking towards the upcoming Union Budget for some relief and support for recovery. It’s not just large scale reforms and special packages that the industry is seeking from the budget but also there is a dire need to consider the timely restrictions imposed everytime when the pandemic changes its face. While the Government of India has been very supportive with its progressive policies for the hospitality industry, this time the industry needs more protection and backing to survive and stay afloat. Revisiting the GST structure to reduce complexity would be a welcome move. Varied GST for different products and services creates confusion. Reduced GST on the services which currently come under high levels would make services more affordable and help in getting better business volumes. Also easier loan facilities for MSMEs and subsidies would aid the recovering domestic businesses. India has a lot of enriching travel experiences to offer. Promotion of these incredible domestic travel experiences and destinations would help in increasing traction and add new life to the business in domestic travel. This will help the Indian Hospitality industry to recover losses and get back on the path to growth.
Pushkar Mukewar, CEO/Co-Founder, Drip Capital
The Union Budget season is back, and amidst the nearly two-year-long pandemic, it marks as another brilliant opportunity to empower the resilient 6.3 crores medium, small, and micro enterprises (MSMEs) of the country. Battered by a slowdown in demand, substantial liquidity crunch, global supply chain woes, and stringent checks in trade, MSMEs grappled for oxygen to survive, and those that did had to wage a tough battle to sustain.
With Budget 2022, the government has the chance to withhold its commitment to the backbone sector of the economy by emboldening them with five armours.
1) Meet Credit Needs
The previous year’s INR 15,700 Cr allocation for MSMEs to grow was a step in the right direction. The MSMEs need a transparent and easy process for this credit to be tricked down. This essentially is possible with collateral-free loans with increased borrowing limits. In the pandemic, the demand-supply chain cycle has become longer than earlier, resulting in more liquidity requirements to complete the cycle on time.
Encouraging banks to lend to MSMEs is always a welcome proposition. In the absence of banks’ active adoption of collateral-free loans due to possible non-performing loans malaise, interest subvention schemes specifically focussed on MSMEs are the need of the hour. To embolden the government’s ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ movement, domestic trade finance companies and non-banking financing companies (NBFCs) should be encouraged. And this is possible with a further reduction in corporate taxation from the prior 2019 reduction in base corporate taxes.
2) Promote Exports
Last year’s Budget announcement of increasing customs duty on MSME-produced items using plastic builder ware, steel screws, and nuts, polished stones to push domestic manufacturing was noteworthy. For MSMEs to truly enhance exports, the production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes need also to include labour-intensive sectors such as textiles and leather. Furthermore, easing the duties framework would prove to be a filip for the Indian MSMEs.
3) Incentivize Digitization
A critical step needs to be taken to incentivize digitization in the demand-supply chain of MSMEs. This will help meet international standards of quality and catch up with global ways and means to carry out trade.
For Indian MSMEs to embrace digital tools and translate advancements in technology in everyday commerce, the government introducing sops could be a welcome step. The INR 1,500 Cr scheme announced in last year’s Budget to promote digital payments has already seen remarkable results with at-scale adoption country-wide. Besides payments, helping MSMEs access credit, establish a digital footprint to meet the demand, and open doors to supply to a global audience is sure to expedite the cause of MSMEs’ growth.
4) Simplify GST
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is among the most revered topics when it comes to MSMEs. With the Finance Minister taking timely measures to ease GST compliances for the benefit of businesses and traders, further lowering of GST is an ongoing demand that may give a much-needed boost to MSMEs.
A robust government framework towards educating MSMEs to claim input tax credit more seamlessly could help ease liquidity pressures.
5) Strengthen On-ground Logistics
A key aspect of MSMEs’ business cycle is the use of logistics for the demand and supply of goods to be a definite success. A low-cost and domestically-effective logistics network is needed to reduce the logistics costs, which is crucial for overall profits.
Reducing the cost of doing business will also promote the government’s Ease of Doing Business agenda and further directly benefit MSMEs.
Conclusion
For the MSMEs to continue to stay much more resilient in the pandemic, the above five armours will serve well at a time when the world has its eyes on what India has to offer, and Indian offerings are being seen at par with global counterparts. The Budget 2022 could be the shot in the arm for MSMEs whose growth directly helps the country’s overall development, thereby enabling the government to achieve its ambition of an INR 5 trillion economy by 2024-25
Ravi Kumar Founder of MadHawks a Digital Marketing Agency.
India, standing in the 3rd position in terms of the largest startup ecosystem in the world, arises the demand for new policies and initiatives that support their growth from the Indian government which will allow the whole nation to flourish in terms of the global economy. Some of the core expectations from the startup sector are tax relief and the easy accessibility of capital funds. When ESOPs are given to the employees as the biggest factor of motivation where an attractive package cannot be offered initially, the government is expected to allow deferred tax payment on ESOP buyback distribution tax or can try to waive off the aggregated tax percentage of 23.30% on the distributed income. The startup community expects policies and reforms that can make the MSMEs and other tech-based startups get access to the unmet capital needs of the organization. Also, a huge group of young entrepreneurs requests for simplifying the GST compliances for online selling, through which they can make use of the several e-commerce platforms to the optimum level, ultimately enabling for magnified economic growth.
Atul Goyal, CFO, Brigade Enterprises Ltd
The Real Estate Sector will benefit immensely if the entire sector is given Infrastructure Status. SEZ offices should be allowed to lease their space to non-SEZ tenants as well. With regard to income tax under section 80IBA for Affordable housing projects, the Government should consider an extension of another two years, applicable for those projects approved on or before 31.03.2020. due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Presently commercial space is given only 3% of the aggregate carpet area of the housing project. We request 5% to 10% is the ideal percentage to sustain the economic benefits from the project. Since 3% is very minimal for metro cities like Bengaluru. Currently, affordable housing projects need to be completed within 5 years; we request the Government to extend the completion period from 5 years to 7 years. Also, the cap on the affordable housing projects Rs. 45 lac is very minimal, and we urge the Government to increase the limit up to 80 lacs in metro cities and 50 lacs for non-metro cities.
Presently under Section 80IAB benefits for developing SEZ project, a developer will get income tax benefits u/s 80IAB for any ten consecutive assessment years out of fifteen years beginning from the year in which SEZ notified by the Government. We request and recommend here the Government increases the total number of years i.e. instead of 15 years we request the government to consider 25 years. Currently, developers hardly get any income tax benefits under this section. With regard to deemed income from house property u/s 23(5) of the IT Act, stock-in-trade flats are subjected to income from house property if the stocks-in-trade flats held more than two years [Finance Act, 2017 has inserted sub-section (5) to Section 23 (section 23 talks about determination of annual value)]. We request the Government to do away with immediate effect or enhance the stock in trade period at least by two more years. Since, as a developer we are incurring carrying cost, finance cost, overhead cost, etc in addition to this paying notional income tax is huge burden. We urge the Government, for the time being, to remove taxation on all deeming incomes of real estate sector, if not for all sectors. Under Section 24, the hike in the interest rate claim is a positive note. However, we urge the Government however, to increase the benefit at least upto 3 lac for next few years. This will definitely create a positive sentiment in the buyers’ mind set. With effect from Assessment Year 2020-21, the Finance Act, 2019 has amended Section 54 to extend the benefit of exemption in respect of investment made in two residential house properties. The exemption for the investment made, by way of purchase or construction, in two residential house properties shall be available if the amount of long-term capital gains does not exceed Rs. 2 crores. We request the Government to consider short term Capital Gains also for at least next 3 years or increase the existing long-term capital gains from 2 crores to 5 crores. This will really help to boost the real estate sector. Presently an individual is eligible under section 80EE to claim interest income utpo Rs. 50,000 based on certain conditions that the loan amount does not exceed Rs 35,00,000, the value of residential house does not exceed Rs. 50,00,000 and the individual does not hold any house on the date of sanction of loan. We urge government to increase the loan and apartment/house value from Rs. 35,00,000 to 70,00,000 and apartment/house cost from Rs. 50,00,000 to 1,00,00,000. Presently effective GST rates are 1% for affordable housing projects and 5% for other than affordable housing projects. The cap on the affordable housing projects Rs. 45 lac is very minimal and we urge the Government to increase the housing cost limit upto 80 lacs in metro cities and 50 lacs for non-metro cities.
Also, presently the total apartment value there is 1/3 deduction for land deduction. We urge the Government to increase the ceiling limit upto 45% in metros and non-metros 35% so as to balance the cost of the project. Presently, w.e.f. 1.4.2019 for the new projects ITC benefits are not available. We urge the Government to remove the restriction on ITC claim and allow developers to claim the ITC benefits so that the project cost would come down to that extent. If not 100% claim at least some proportionate benefits so that the construction cost can be minimized. It would be a welcome move if the Government would consider GST rate reduction for steel and cement; if not in overall rate reduction, at least for affordable housing projects. At present there is lot of confusion on credit eligibility on construction of commercial buildings. We urge the Government to clarify the issue by allowing ITC benefits for construction of commercial buildings. With new GST rate 1% is applicable if the housing unit is having carpet area 60 sqmts and the value of the housing units is less than Rs. 45,00,000. We recommend the Government to increase the celling limit from Rs. 45,00,000 to 60,00,00 at least in metro cities. Additionally, TDR/JDA rights needs to be kept outside the purview of GST as these rights are purely in relation to immovable property. We are hopeful that the Government will merge Stamp duty with GST Act.
Kamal Khetan, CMD, Sunteck Realty Ltd
We expect the wheels of reforms and the impetus to the real estate sector to accelerate the growth of the GDP further, with the vision, “Housing for All by 2022” being at the centre of this year’s Budget.
Enhancing the ambit of Affordable Housing:
With regards to affordable housing, the Govt will have to revisit the nomenclature defining the segment to accommodate more people within metropolitan regions. Enhancing the cap (of Rs 45 lakhs) in metro cities to Rs 80 lakhs to Rs 1 crore will extend the benefit of affordable housing. Such a move would allow more buyers to avail of benefits like lower GST, Govt subsidies, and a tax deduction on interest repayment.
Other benefits:
There is an expectation that the tax exemption on the interest would be hiked to Rs. 5 lakhs from the Rs 2 lakhs at present. There is also a need for deductions on home loan principal repayment as well as extending the loan repayment period to give more relief and inducement to buyers
To sustain the current growth momentum, the sector needs to be accorded the infrastructure status that would improve liquidity in the sector. We also expect the input tax GST credit for developers and a reduction in stamp duty and registration charges – as announced by a few states last fiscal – to continue. The Govt must make more announcements to enhance the ease of doing business for developers.
Kushal Nahata, CEO & Co-founder, FarEye
“We expect the government to bring the long-awaited National Logistics Policy (NLP) into action. The logistics industry is the backbone of the economy and the policy will help ease bottlenecks, and reduce costs. India’s logistics cost is approximately 14% of its GDP. The government must decrease the logistics cost to 8-10% of the GDP and bring it at par with other developing countries. The wide-ranging reforms in the NLP will act as a catalyst in making India a $5-trillion economy. We want policy reforms that accelerate the pace of digitalisation to ensure sustainable growth in the future. We hope that the Union Budget will focus on increasing investments in modern technologies like AI, ML and Blockchain for greater transparency and cost management in the logistic industry. We are expecting the government to fast track the new warehousing policy which focuses on the development of exclusive warehousing zones. 2022 also needs to expedite the creation of an online logistics marketplace that brings various stakeholders like LSPs, government agencies, rail, road and air cargo on a single platform.”
Siddhartha Gupta, CEO, Mercer|Mettl.
From Ed-Tech POV:
As the pandemic turns into an endemic, and we move into a disrupted world, education is one service that needs to provided uninterrupted. Over the past two years, our Ed-Tech sector has proven that it has the capability to do so. Therefore, the need of the hour is that the Government and the Ed-Tech sector must come together to collaborate, establish a framework, guidelines and clearly define the modus operandi for digitizing education. Emphasis should be on enhancing our digital and physical infrastructure. In addition, our education curriculum needs a rethink. . The aim should be imparting employable, digital and flexible skills with the focus on skilling, reskilling and upskilling if we want our youth to participate in a data driven digital economy that is perpetually evolving because of the digitization process and the great resignation. Furthermore, as online exams become the norm, official guidelines and framework needs to be established. If we are to compete globally with other economies, then our education sector is key. Therefore, there is also a need for innovation and liberalization of the education sector. However, that is only possible through integrating and strengthening our big data and AI capabilities.
From Economical POV:
As we approach closer to the budget month, students and teachers are hoping for an education budget which will help them overcome COVID-induced challenges. This would also be the first Budget after the unveiling of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and budgetary interventions are expected towards these reforms. Historically all panels as well as the NEP proposes that a progressive country needs at least 6% of GDP to be spent on Education. India has been averaging between 2 and 3 % between the years 2014 to 2019. In the last budget, the finance minister had promised a 2.1% increase over the actual spend of 2019-20. In reality for the year 2020-21, the allocation for the Ministry of Education has actually got reduced from INR 99,312 crore at the budget stage to INR 85,089 crore at the revised stage….a decrease of hold your breath …14%). Just to draw an ironical reference point, BYJU is valued at 21 B after its series F (INR 1.56 Lakh Cr).
Another unfortunate details is that the biggest hit seems to be the National Education Mission (Samagra Shiksha) which has seen a whopping 48% reduction. Teacher training, a fresh initiative has crawled to 120 Cr, against an allocation of 250 Cr. A meagre amount for the size of our Country and its education needs. As per the ‘The Economic Survey 2020-21’ there are a few silver linings, prominent being the fact that from March 2020 to October 2020, the percentage of students in government and private schools owning a smartphone increased from 36.5% in 2018 to 61.8% in 2020 in rural India. This could be the result of INRs 818 crore was shared by the central government across states to promote online learning, this needs to be validated. To summarize, we continue to spend 2 to 3%t of GDP on education (The start point is a disaster). The Institutions are so broken that we are going to spend less than what we spend in 2019-20. COVID is not going away in 2022, so clearly education is going to continue to suffer. However, as they say, every tragedy has an opportunity hidden in it. This pandemic continues to provide educators a chance to slam breaks on what’s not working and rethink education.
From Skilling POV:
A formalization of the Indian economy is happening and hence it’s expected that we will have a more structured approach to up-Skilling, reskilling and industry – academia collaboration led by India Inc. However, both domestic and exports are increasing. On merchandise export front, it is expected to hit 400-500 B USD this financial Year. It has already touched April to Dec 300 B USD (Level of last full year. Petroleum, Gems and Pharma being the top 3. Job creating Industries like Textile and Apparel which employs a whopping 4 Cr people directly or indirectly, has grown at a healthy 9% YOY and attracted nearly 3.5 B in FDI so more jobs are expected to be created. Impact of Industry 4.0 is going to become more evident with Smart machines automating the manufacturing processes end to end, requiring the present workforce to be re-skilled in the new paradigm. Hence Re-Skilling and Digital skilling will have to go hand in hand. Across industries. On services export, one industry which has led across the pandemic is IT/ ITES. Growth in this sector will be leaps and bound. This sector has been adding a net of attrition of 30000 people per quarter, expected to grow even faster. Indian IT export is expected to touch 150 B more than 120 B Oil exported by Saudi in one year adding 200000 new jobs to an already big worker strength of 43 Lakh. New job roles created in ML/ AI, Data Sciences, Full Stack, Dev ops etc…across the Software development cycle. AI and automation, earlier touted as a death blow to people centric India IT model came unfounded, newer technologies have been additive to job creation. An era of Job scarcity to People scarcity is under way. People who can up-skill to be relevant in the changing parading will be scarce and be at a premium. Every company and individual has to think about re-learning. On the Government’s effort, I have long maintained that a budget of 3000 Cr is just too less to have any perceptible impact on Skill development for every industry. This year India is spending 2300r, nearly 200 Cr less than the allocated budget. Pure Skill development initiatives are expected to spend 1700 Cr 200 Cr less than last year.
Sanjay Shah, Chief Operating Officer, Wadhwani Foundation – India/SEA
“The Indian startup ecosystem skyrocketed in 2021 to become the third-largest globally with 78 unicorns, 8 IPOs and a 3x increase in total funding over last year to touch $39 billion. However, despite a stellar show, two challenges are predominant in the Indian startup space; (1) many unicorns in India lack a compelling revenue base and require an infusion of cash flow for survival (2) the need to accelerate their digital transformation with technology and platforms. Hence, in 2022, the government should look at assisting startups through policies and support mechanisms towards domestic capital participation, favourable investment climate in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, incentives to set up incubators in every state, tax exemptions in foreign direct investments, and a high focus on startup infrastructure development. This will also help in the globalisation of Indian startups as ~42% of them are planning to go global in 2022.”
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Satish Shukla, Co-founder & Head- HR & Marketing, Addverb Technologies
“2021 has been the year of the unicorns and also the time taken by startups to become a unicorn has also decreased. These unicorns have created employment and have contributed to creating a new commerce and economy. At present the tax rate for capital gain on unlisted shares are different vis a vis the listed shares resulting in higher tax outflow for startup founders and early stage investors. They could be rationalized at par with listed securities to bring parity, Also, with the new commerce, gig economy has been on the rise with jobs being created through e-commerce firms. Bringing these new kinds of jobs under the minimum wages ambit shall provide a good social security cover to this vulnerable set of gig workers like delivery boys etc.”
Srinath Mukherji, Co-Founder, SANA Insurance Brokers Pvt. Ltd. (SANA.Insure).
Main budget idea – “Reduce GST on health insurance, since medical services have either Nil GST or at a lower rate. It is a disincentive for the customer to take much needed health insurance. That amount could instead be utilized for buying higher coverage, thus getting full value for money and making health insurance more affordable for buyers.”
Subramanyam S, CEO Of AscentHR
Hit by the pandemic over the last two years, Income in the hands of individuals be it salaried or otherwise, except the IT / ITES / Healthcare employees, has shrunk owing to lesser opportunities combined with an average appraisal(s). This trend has led to reduced earnings and increased expenses causing a dent in savings potential which was hitherto a big contributor in the Indian economy. Given the circumstances, Govt must continue the option of both the old and new regimes and encourage small savings for tax purposes and possibly put more cash in the hands of individuals through more tax saving options or increase of standard deduction. In addition the government should consider incentivizing employers promoting WFH to facilitate better growth of Tier II and Tier III cities or engaging more GIG/Platform workers which reduces gender bias and enhances options before an individual in ways he can improve earnings. Lastly, the much talked about labour reforms must see the light of the day for facilitating better and uniform practices across India enabling a business friendly approach with emphasis on digital / faceless governance leading to lower corruption as well as easy ways of managing business.
Shivam Sinha, Founder and CEO of Indiassetz
“With respect to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian economy grew 8.4% in the 3rd quarter of 2021. While India is going through another wave of the pandemic, it is crucial to closely examine and redefine the wealth, investment, and tax reforms of the country. To keep the growth intact, tax policies on investments in global stocks and foreign direct investments should promptly be reviewed. While the tax revenue is of crucial importance to the recovery of the Indian economy, a balanced approach towards GST, property tax liability, and stamp duty will play a very important role in determining an average Indian’s ability to invest in the real estate sector. Starting from the remotest of areas in the country, a focus on investments in townships and infrastructure is equally important to help the Indian economy rise back to its full potential.”
Gunish Jain, CEO, BlueKaktus
“TDS has been a point of concern across the industry. Currently, a TDS of 10% assumes profitability of 40% which is generally not the case for corporations. With a major chunk of capital being held back in the form of TDS, maintaining big cash flow becomes a challenge. Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) find it challenging to secure loans as most of their money is blocked by the government in the form of TDS. In my experience, the TDS needs to be trimmed down to 7.5% for all whereas for SMEs it should be further reduced to 2.5%.”“In addition to TDS, the government should also revise the GST on software services to 12%. This will improve the adoption of technology in the industry and urge more companies to move along with the times and digitize.” He further adds, “Amongst exporters too, the cash flow issue persists when it comes to GST refund. The current process of collecting and then refunding leads to massive cash flow issues in the industry. I believe that the government should revise the existing GST refund timeline and devise a mechanism to automatically refund the money within 45 days of a filed request. Moreover, fixing a date on the refunds can help companies align their business objectives accordingly.”
Anurag Yadav, CEO – IHH Healthcare India
Vishal Bhatia, CFO, True Balance
Nitin Rao, CEO – InCred Wealth
“While there are murmurs going around on budget expectations, we must remember that the budget is coming in the midst of many State Election campaigns. It is unlikely that the Govt will be able to announce any earth shattering reforms or populist measures since the Code of Conduct is in place at state levels. I would therefore expect a low-key budget this time and the markets would likely discount sentiments revolving around earnings and election expectations in this period.”
Rajiv K Vij, Founder, Plug Mobility
We expect the budget to be Growth oriented and to give relief to Commercial Car industry and other sectors which have been badly impacted due to the pandemic and lockdowns.
Rahul Jha, Chief Executive Officer at LEI Register India
Although LEI registration has picked up pace over the past few years, it is imperative that certain measures are taken for improved adoption at a large scale. One long-standing demand from the government has been to start e-registration for proprietorship and partnership firms. It would go a long way in helping business firms with better credit penetration.
Furthermore, some more measures may be considered in the Budget. A few recommendations include allowing and making an easy process to register businesses as a digital nomad, easing KYC norms for corporates and business firms, and linking the Legal Entity Identifier with other registration IDs, which would be helpful for regulators and banks to understand companies better.
However, the industry is also concerned about KYC norms. Currently, one needs to get the open data for all business registration ids at one platform for business entities like LEI, GST, IEC, PAN, CIN, and others. If these measures are implemented effectively, it will propel the sector ahead immensely, allowing it to reach greater heights.
The Fleet owners/commercial car industry has suffered hugely during the pandemic and while it makes sense to induct Electric cars, the fleet owners are financially stressed and financial sector is maintaining a negative view about the sector to fund Electric cars for commercial fleet segment.
Government must declare EV’s for commercial car industry as a priority sector, implement First Loss Guarantee Scheme for the sector and ensure that the public sector banks and financial institutions offer easy finance with minimal margin money requirement at low interest rates for EV fleets.
Dr. Angeli Misra (MD Path), Founder & Director, Lifeline Laboratory
“To combat the pandemic crisis, increased fund allocation in every aspect of the healthcare sector, a reduction in GST and import duty for critical care equipment and components (86% of which are dependent on imports) as an initiative for government support for the medical devices manufacturing industry, more funding to boost the development of the digital health sector and the production of point-of-care equipment can bring the highest level of quality care to the interiors and remote areas of India. In addition, the establishment of more medical education institutions and imparting of advanced training to enhance the skills of healthcare workers is of considerable significance and the need of the hour.”
Harvinder Singh Sikka, MD, Sikka Group
The Government should focus on extending infrastructure status to the sector that has been contributing significantly to country’s GDP. The buyers expect that prices remain stagnant, but it is becoming difficult for the developers to hold on to the current prices owing to the increased cost of raw materials. The government should take steps in the upcoming Budget to ensure that real estate gets relief from the cartelization, ensuring that prices remain under control and benefits can be passed on to the buyers.
Sagar Saxena, Project Head, Spectrum Metro
The need is to have measures and steps to help the sector sustain demand. The growth would depend on tax rationalization, more affordable housing incentives, and initiatives to solve stuck projects issues. Real estate growth will also depend on the overall measures to boost economic growth, including an increased focus on overall infrastructure development.
RCM Reddy, MD & CEO, Schoolnet India Ltd
”Schoolnet India looks forward to the Budget 2022-23, as the past year has been very challenging for school education. In keeping with the National Education Policy 2020, we hope that the Government of India announces measures to strengthen the digital capability of each school, owing to the great digital divide that still exists, on a mission mode. Such a digital initiative should be holistic including access to the internet, affordable & appropriate devices, projectors, teacher training in digital pedagogy, curriculum centric multimedia content, adaptive assessments, and analytics to track progress. Given the considerable expertise of private sector in Edutech, PPP models could be explored to execute such a mission. This will set the foundation on which the effectiveness of teaching and learning will improve and pave the path to democratise access to education.”
Neerja Birla, Founder and Chairperson, Aditya Birla Education Trust (ABET)
“The Union Budget of 2021-22, allocated over 71,000 crores to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Mental healthcare, however, received only 597 crores. Out of this, 500 crores were set aside for National Institute of Mental Health and Sciences (NIMHANS) and 57 crores for the mental health institute in Tezpur, Assam, leaving a mere 40 crores for the National Mental Health Program that caters to the needs of 14% of India’s population that suffers from mental health issues.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated India’s mental health crisis by unimaginable proportions. The 86,000 calls that we have received on the BMC-Mpower 1on1 Helpline clearly indicate that social distancing, isolation from family and friends, loneliness, financial hardships and other difficulties have given exponential rise to stress, depression, anxiety, alcohol and substance abuse, domestic violence and suicidal tendencies in people. Pre-existing conditions have gotten aggravated for so many.
The pandemic has changed the world as we knew it. In the aftermath of the contagion and the negative impact it has had on all our lives, we need to rethink how we look at mental health. The Union Budget 2022-23 needs to put focus not only on India’s overall healthcare but also categorically on India’s mental healthcare. A substantial budgetary allocation can pave the way for infrastructure to be rapidly developed and comprehensive mental healthcare made accessible everywhere, especially in the rural areas, so that all those who need help can get it in timely manner.
India’s mental health issues have remained neglected for far too long. It is time we take concrete steps and start caring for those who are suffering silently.”
Dheeraj Jain, Founder, Redcliffe Labs
“The ongoing pandemic has put the healthcare sector in the spotlight. The Govt of India has been very supportive to companies working in the healthcare domain. Diagnostic companies to be specific are using advanced technologies in the early diagnosis and predictive analysis that give healthcare experts an early insight into complex health conditions. The upcoming budget is expected to be more focused on increased investments for R&D in terms of developing new technologies that enable faster and efficient healthcare delivery at affordable costs. Tax deduction on import duties of diagnostic equipments, beneficial tax rates to attract investments and considering healthcare for zero-rated GST can be crucial steps by the Govt in the advancement of the sector. Another welcome step would be to promote medical education in the country to increase the number of skilled healthcare workers which is the need of the hour.”
Dheeraj Jain, Founder, Crysta IVF
“While the Government has reaffirmed its commitment to improve healthcare delivery methods and infrastructure in recent months, as well as taken significant strides towards its aim of “universal healthcare for everyone,” a more holistic approach needs to be taken. The major focus of the Budget 2022 in regards to the healthcare sector should be increased healthcare expenditure to cater to – upgradation of medical infrastructure, shortage of medical manpower in India, improve healthcare funding with subsidized loans, training of skilled workforce. The budget should also promise investment in the development of ICU facilities, diagnostic laboratories, and Fertility Treatments as these medical expertise areas have the potential to attract revenues and become an important element in India’s overall growth. Most importantly, depending upon the budget structure, insurance companies can play a vital role in covering fertility treatments under health insurance as only maternity costs are covered until now by the companies.”
Kunal Bhalla, Founder & CEO, CRC Group
The real estate sector is eagerly waiting for the upcoming budget announcement this year. As industry gradually started treading back on the path of revival, with the support of low home loan interest rates and stamp duty cuts in some regions; need of more such measures and policy support still remains that can help the sector sustain growing demand. It is crucial for the Finance Ministry to understand how reviving the industry of real estate will help in creating a ripple effect to the ancillaries and boost economy overall. Some of the major expectations are tax sops and higher relief on the home loan rates which will ultimately woo a broader segment of end-users and investors to buy property. Additionally, the existing tax exemption on housing loans should be raised for giving impetus to prevalent buyer sentiment and stimulating the sector. A liquidity support must also be extended to the developer community, so that smooth work flow can be maintained and timely delivery of projects can be achieved. GST reforms, industry status and single window clearance also remain some of the long standing demands from the developers.
Uddhav Poddar, MD, Bhumika Group
“The commercial real estate has managed to sustain itself despite the adverse circumstances that occurred due to the pandemic. Some of the major commercial projects in Tier-I and Tier-II cities of the country are on the verge of successful completion. However, we seek following reforms in the upcoming budget like real estate sector to get awarded with industry status, GST input tax credit on development of leased properties. We also seek the governments intervention to decrease the number of approvals for real estate projects and also availability of finance for real estate development projects. Providing industry status will be the much needed boost for the sector, as it will be clearing multiple hurdles related to capital procurement and will be much appreciated by the entire developer community and associated industries for fast-tracking deals. The end result will be faster construction and deliveries which will be majorly reviving nation’s economy overall.”
Pawan Sharma, Director, Trisol RED Infraventures Pvt Ltd.
The sector needs handholding when sales are picking up pace at this crucial juncture. The need is for steps to boost demand and enable buyers to have increased disposable income. We expect the Budget to have more income tax exemptions to empower the common man. We are seeking Finance Ministry to reduce the GST rates on commercial properties; our suggestion is to bring it down to 5% from the present prevailing rate of 12%. The Budget should also take stock of the long pending demand of industry status to the real estate sector, which will streamline several things, including ease of financing and ultimately generating scope of more employment opportunities in the sector and associated industries.
Arun Nayyar, CEO, NeoGrowth Credit Pvt Ltd.
“In the upcoming Union Budget 2022-23, we expect to see initiatives that would further strengthen the financial inclusion of MSMEs in India and encourage digitisation. With the third wave upon us, we expect to see an extension on priority sector lending to NBFCs by banks extending credit to underserved and unserved MSME segments. To boost adoption of digital payments by the MSME sector, we would like to see the introduction of incentives such as tax breaks for merchants who adopt digital payments. For instance: A scheme under which a retailer with digital sales above 75% of all the sales, cash and digital, should incur a lower rate of income tax to accelerate/encourage digital payment adoption. This scheme would help in financial inclusion of small businesses under the formal tax system and help formalize the business transactions.”
Anuj Khosla, Chief Executive Officer – Digital Business, Hitachi Payment Services
“The Budget 2022 should incentivise the MSME sector to adopt digital payments progressively. The digital payment ecosystem can unlock value for MSMEs by helping them expand customer base, improving cash flows through faster realization of funds, providing upsell opportunities, reducing costs and creating a digital footprint that would enable easy access to credit at cheaper rates. With the impact of the pandemic and the shift towards online purchases and adoption of digital payment modes by consumers, MSMEs need to be adequately equipped to cater to changing customer needs and behaviour while enabling them to thrive in an evolving digital landscape”.
Surjendu Kuila, Founder and CEO, Zopper
“Insurance in India has a long history and has grown at a rapid pace over the last two decades as a result of key government initiatives, strong democratic forces, a favourable regulatory environment, expanded collaborations, product innovations, and lively distribution channels. Embedded Insurance is amongst the new and interesting concepts that India is looking forward to adopting, with partnership between insurers and other industries. The economic importance of Embedded Insurance, as well as the need to enhance insurance coverage and density in India, have been highlighted by previous pandemics and natural disasters. Furthermore, the elimination of GST on insurance premiums, as well as an extension of the exemption for premiums paid for insurance under income tax regulations, will lower financial costs.”
Vijeta Soni, Co-Founder & CEO, Sciative Solutions
“The Indian retail business has been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 outbreak. While there was some improvement in demand throughout the holiday season, maintaining this demand is crucial for the industry’s overall revenue prospects. The main expectation from the Union Budget 2022 is for the Government to take initiatives to increase consumer discretionary income. Given the organized retail industry’s massive under-penetration in India, the upcoming Budget FY22 should be projected to focus on strengthening physical and digital infrastructure, as well as addressing supply chain inefficiencies, and encourage retailers to expand into tier II, tier III and small towns as well. The pandemic has accelerated e-commerce penetration. However, this segment is currently beset by a number of challenges, the most serious of which is a lack of clarity regarding the regulatory framework that governs the sector.”
Harsh Vaidya, Founder & CEO,WareIQ
The prospects for the logistics industry are a series of probative initiatives, such as effective prosecution of a well-defined National Logistics Policy (NLP), vindication, and relaxation of taxes for warehousing, and concentrate on creating a professed workforce for logistics and supply chain. Several players, driven largely by the e-commerce boom, have enforced some of the advanced technologies similar to IoT, AI/ ML for smart warehousing and logistics. In order to give the important- demanded impetus, the industry is awaiting policy support and duty relaxations that will help inoculate investment particularly on technology and make India’s logistics industry more competitive.
Punit Gupta, Founder & CEO, EasyEcom
” Due to a rapid increase in the internet user penetration and increased desire for quick access to goods and services among consumers, India’s e-commerce business has experienced a significant expansion in recent years. When it comes to e-commerce, the options are unlimited, whether it’s fashion, clothes, or consumer durables industry. As a result, we are seeing a multiplicity of new business models emerge inside ecommerce, such as social ecommerce, recommerce, subscription-based ecommerce, vertical e-commerce focused on women, children, and male grooming and fashion. Expectations in the ecommerce sector are directed towards the MSME sector, particularly for B2B players. It would be wonderful to see the Government implement policies that encourage ecommerce activities along with MSMEs branding to promote their market presence.”
Vineet Tyagi, Global CTO, Biz2X
“The pandemic that shook the entire world has brought immense innovation by startups and new-age technology companies and it is quite evident that the trend will only pick up in the year 2022 as well. In the spirit of tech innovation and digital transformation, we hope, through the union budget 2022-23, the government will bring game-changing reforms, new policies, and regulations that will offer relief and tax sops to MSMEs and the overall startup ecosystem. With the pandemic providing the boost to digital payments, there is an increased need for revolutionary advancements of end-to-end infrastructural as fragmentary solutions may not sustain in the long run. In 2022, we expect that the government to focus more on the development of digital infrastructure to enhance customer experiences, credit quality, and streamline the growth of financial entities in FY22-23.”
Vivek Banka, Founding Team, Goalteller
“As the old adage goes “ No News is Good News” . As a startup founder, I think there are a lot of tailwinds that are existent in terms of ample liquidity, regulatory changes and broad based digital adoption. Other benefits have also been passed in over last many years for startups and small businesses and hence my expectations towards this years budget is status quo which in itself would bode well for everyone in the ecosystem. Whether it be personal taxes, corporate taxes or capital gain taxes the regime should be made easier and progressively lower as the government has themselves stated earlier.
Focus we believe should continue to remain on more transparency, greater compliance and finally easier rules of doing business ( whether it be relaxed norms or government portals working smoothly every single thing that helps empower startups with easier processes eventually helps us save time and money. ”
Aditya Damani, Founder, Credit Fair
“The government needs to play a fine balancing act between spurring economic growth while consolidating its finances. We expect Credit Fair’s focus sectors of Healthcare, Housing and Education to get policy support from the government as they’re key to improve our social infrastructure as well as for job creation. The LIC IPO and other measures to raise revenues will be crucial for the government. We hope it’s a fiscally responsible budget since inflation has been rising and that could lead to higher interest rates which would be a headwind for fintechs. Subdued interest rates especially in Government bonds and Fixed deposits will be needed to spur capex, SMEs and fintech lending. As a creator of Alternative Assets we hope the Budget will nudge individuals to diversify their portfolio and enable pension funds to invest in a wider range of fixed income or equity assets that have been created by fintechs.”
Anuj Kumbhat, Founder & CEO, Weather Risk Management Services(WRMS)
“As agriculture remains the backbone of the rural economy in India, the sector is always the key spotlight in the Union Budget. In the current scenario, where the country is making all the possible ways to deal with another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we expect the government to allocate a significant amount of budget that paves the way for economic revival for the farmers. As we know, COVID has given a booster dose to the digital transformation; we would like the government to put policies in place that allows farmers to be better aware of technology-enabled smart approaches in farming. This can be done as an offshoot of the much-publicised “Digital India” where there was added impetus on the adoption of digital technology.
We envision a future where technology becomes the best companion of the farmer and provides them the best productivity from their limited means. This can only be achieved by de-risking farming to impart the confidence to adopt the latest innovations and technology among the farmers, especially smallholders. Hope the government imparts the agritech sector necessary opportunities and incentives to grow as a robust sector within the country’s economy.”
Kapil Bhatia, Founder & CEO, UNIREC
The fashion startups are expecting the government to improve the disposable income of the consumers as well as the reduction in GST rates of readymade clothings. Current GST rates of readymade clothes that cost above INR 1000 fall under the category of 12 percent and the government should bring it down to 5 percent. The government, with its budget, should focus on improving the infrastructure and remove any kind of inconveniences in the supply chain for a smoother functioning of the fashion retail industry. In addition to tax rate reduction, easier compliance and simplification of taxes are two of the major expectations of the functional fashion startups in the market. Moreover, the prime motive of the government should be to empower both skilled and unskilled employees.”
Punit Sindhwani, CEO, Paxcom
The last two years have been challenging, especially for SMB, but have also provided opportunities for businesses that were able to successfully embrace eCommerce and Digital Payments. For SMB to survive and thrive, a greater impetus is needed to provide digital tools, training and guidance. Our expectation from the union budget is financial support/incentives, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses, to help accelerate the digital India vision.
Sharad Bansal, Co- Founder, Tinkerly
” With the country witnessing the 3rd wave of Covid, online classes have become mainstream now but they currently come under 18% GST slab. Relaxation on GST for online classes and STEM toys will encourage more enrollments of interested students. Due to COVID, we saw the demand-supply gap and it is crucial to bridge the gap by providing internet connectivity, better infrastructure in tier 3 and tier 4 cities, and running schemes like One student One laptop, scholarships should be provided for outstanding performances. Technical and soft skills training should be made mandatory for teachers. They should be trained to teach and maintain the engagement of the students in online classes. A provision of budget can be made under SSA for the same. Funds and disbursements to Atal tinkering Labs should be speeded up to improve the quality of education. Currently only schools can get grants for Atal Tinkering Labs, this should be extended to private learning centres and independent educators so that community driven Tinkering Labs can be established. We strongly believe Futuristic tech skills such as IoT, AI, coding should be included in the curriculum.Currently India’s government expenditure on education per child studying in government schools is significantly higher than the private education spent per child studying in private schools. This inefficiency can be reduced by providing Vouchers for direct education with the liberty to choose where and how to spend it. As mentioned in NEP 2020, the foundational pillars of technology such as equity, access, quality, affordability, and accountability should be leveraged and imposed.”
Amit Damanl, Co- Founder and Head Sales & Marketing, Vista Rooms
*If we look at the homestay villa segment especially, it’s always in the grey area, and we’d need more clarification at the national level on rules and tax systems that apply to the segment. Currently, it’s fairly fragmented, and each state may have its own set of laws surrounding what constitutes a homestay or bnb, and that’s more of a recognition than a policy. We’re trying to simplify and get each and every property registered as a BNB nationally.
Travellers have recognized homestays in the last two years, and they have become an extremely integral and significant component of domestic tourism, employment-generating pathways, and the subsequent prosperity of local communities. As a result, sufficient legislation and policy recognition are critical, and we expect to see suggestions in this year’s budget.*
Gururaj Bhat, Chief Finance Officer, Karle Infra Pvt. Ltd.
Being into mixed development, our Budget expectations on two areas of developments are as under.
RESIDENTIAL:-
Off-late, the developers are witnessing robust sales in the residential segment as many people are being eligible for increased quantum of loan due to drastic reduction in the interest cost.
Earlier the developers use to take GST input credit on the construction cost paid and use to adjust against GST collected from the ultimate customers. Subsequently the GST payment on residential purchase was slashed by Govt. from 12% to 5% and the provision to set off GST paid by the developers on construction cost against GST collected from the customers was taken off. In the present scenario, the developers are compelled to add the GST paid on construction cost to the total cost of sale. During the current budget ,if the Govt allows the builders to set off the GST at least to the extent of collection against the payment made by them on construction cost, customers would be benefited and the increased sales in the sector can be witnessed wherein the entire inventory/project will be sold.
OFFICE SPACE:-
With regards to SEZ office space developments, as per the present provisions, SEZ developers (IT/ITES) has to lease out the developed space only to 100% export oriented business units. Whereas due to continued pandemic situation, lot of IT and IT enabled services have started consolidating the office space to cut down the cost and many of the IT companies continued to allow its employees to work from home(WFH) options due to which lot of SEZ office spaces are being vacated. Since the sun set clause of Income tax exemptions were not extended, no new companies are looking for SEZ office space for their requirements. In such situation, if the Govt.extends its helping hand by allowing the SEZ developers to have the flexibility to lease to out the SEZ office space to Non-SEZ IT companies, the vacant space can be filled which will facilitate the developers to repay the borrowed loan without any default.
Ashish Chandra, Co-founder, COO & CFO GlobalFair,
Great Economic Opportunity
India today is sitting on a cusp of a great economic opportunity. Covid has had a seismic impact on global production networks such that the logistics cost and sourcing networks have altered fundamentally. Businesses today are more worried about resilience in their supply chain and therefore looking to expand their supplier networks. Over the last few decades China has been the de-facto factory of the world. From industrial raw material to chemicals to finished building materials were all being sourced from China. But the pandemic has made businesses realize that they cannot just rely one a single production hub – what the commentators have dubbed as “China+1” business sentiment. This is a once in a century economic opportunity for India. A small 10% shift of demand from China to India can double India’s exports.
What India needs
The export sector has been supported in successive budgets through a number of schemes. However some strategic issues persist. We need to put more impetus on a trade deal with the UK, EU, US and other like-minded countries in the Asia Pacific region. While India has passed on the opportunity to join regional networks like RECEP, more focus on bilateral deals could bring increased trade activity in these corridors. India’s economy and private sector today are strong enough to compete with global MNCs. India has far more to gain from these trade agreements than we can possibly lose. We need to shed our protective mindset and play from the front foot. Lower trade barriers, special treatment for Indian merchandise, synchronization of product specifications and certifications can open demand floodgates.
India needs to give a renewed focus on promotion of industrial clusters. More manufacturing capacity needs to come up and fast. Promoters need support around land, labour and capital to execute planned projects at great speed. Number of industrial corridors along Delhi-Mumbai, Chennai-Bangalore, Vizag-Chennai etc were planned but the execution is lagging behind. It is also time to revamp SEZ zones policy and provide more focussed export incentives and remove inverted tax structures in import of raw materials.”
Vikram Thaploo, CEO of Apollo Telehealth
“India is combating a massive global pandemic with its resources available in the health sector. The health sector is expecting more specific allotments in this year’s budget to mitigate COVID-19 and help in the growth of the telemedicine sector. The telemedicine segment is growing at a rapid pace and in the future, we are expecting more technological innovations to take place in the industry therefore, the budget should be well allocated to the healthcare sector to initiate new innovations to be prepared for the fight with pandemics like covid-19 in the future. It is important especially in a country like India where digital health can truly provide care to areas with short supply of doctors. Increased allocation of budget for promotion of telemedicine, home-based healthcare and national digital health mission implementation will help in building a strong healthcare ecosystem in the country. Telemedicine has potential to improve access to healthcare in remote and rural areas. Home-based healthcare will reduce burden on limited healthcare facilities. Digital Health along with various innovations should be encouraged for India’s future growth in population health. The government should also support private players and startups in this segment to increase the current coverage of the locations including tier-2 and tier-3 cities to provide the advanced healthcare facilities in these areas.”
Rajesh Khosla, President & CEO of AGI glaspac
Vibhor Sahare, CEO & Co-Founder, ANS Commerce
Startups and MSMEs are looking for measures to improve the credit lending and accessibility of funds that can mobilise growth. We expect that the Union Budget will focus on simplifying taxation, investment, and offering further incentives to Indian startups, that can help in generating more revenue and employment.
Further, measures such as streamlining approvals, compliance for ease of doing business, quicker adoption of technology, and automation by traditional retailers would be immensely helpful to the e-commerce industry. More entrepreneurship and incubation programs should also be a priority.
Naman Jain, Education Expert and Director, Silverline Prestige School, Ghaziabad.
Education is a subject of the concurrent list (Central and State Governments both spend on education). In last year’s budget, INR 93224 crores was allocated for education. Where school education was allocated 59% of this spent – INR 54874 crores and 41% for higher education – INR 38351 crores. While there was an annualized increment in the allocation of more than 2%, the accumulated allocation amounted to less than 3% of the total budget. This needs to be analysed with the fact that The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) emphasizes the need for at least 6% of the total budget to be allocated to education with financial support for critical components of education such as provision of adequate teachers, teacher training, etc. Without which the indented effectiveness is impossible to achieve. While increased allocation of budget for education is advocated and required, it is equally critical to concentrate on increasing the effectiveness of the resources. Underutilization of resources needs to be curbed through policy implementation.
There have been some welcomed steps taken by the government in the field of higher education, especially setting up more world-class institutes. But our country requires more focus and work on school education that builds the foundation. Public private partnership towards strengthening school education through teacher training and capacity building for education delivery can transform the system bringing it more in line for future requirements.
The pandemic has unveiled the huge potential, advantages and capability of EdTech intervention in delivering and execution of education through appropriate methodologies. The future needs hybrid, online, blended, flipped, discovery, experiential and various other learning methods. The upcoming budget should also support and encourage development of new education technologies and innovations.
Sameer Kalra, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer, PumPumPum
“Recovering industries are looking towards the upcoming Union Budget for policies and ground plan for better business opportunity and growth. The automobile industry especially desires a reduction in GST and CESS to push sales. Rationalisation of GST can be translated in better offers for the end consumers and pump traction in sales. Recently government has shown interest in promoting EVs for a more sustainable future. Many auto brands have developed and even rolled out cutting edge EVs. In order to encourage their adoption by public Tax Sops of driving EVs should also be introduced. The transition from traditional fuel to EVs will not be easy and comes with unique teething problems. This process could be eased by supporting the Auto Leasing industry, which will not only prove to be a promising route for early and quick adoption of EVs but also create a lot of employment opportunity for the youth.
Vijay Kumar Mikkilineni, Head of Marketing, TCL India
“Reduction on import tariff is something we are expecting, this will help us compete with countries like China, Mexico, Thailand and more. In the last two years, the PLI schemes have provided momentum to domestic and international investments, but so the investment from the Government side for infrastructure building will boost the ‘Make in India’ movement. We have to integrate India into the global supply chain scenario, to achieve that tariffs should be equal or less than competitive markets.”
Hamish Patel, Chief Product Officer, World of Play
“On the supply side, a much needed relief would be to waive customs duty on the import of electronic components. This will provide a boost to a growing electronics manufacturing sector and relieve stress that has built up over the last 18 months.
It is important that we see a reduction in GST rates, given the component shortages we have seen the price of electronics skyrocketing. Lowering GST will make products affordable and give a boost to the electronics industry.
A progressive take by the government would be to see the government providing incentives to companies with spends on research and development.”
Sai Srinivas, Co-Founder and CEO, Mobile Premier League (MPL)
The online skill gaming and esports industry has been one of the very few sectors that has not just weathered the pandemic-induced slowdown, but has witnessed exponential growth. The industry is bound to grow even further, opening up new career opportunities for both gamers and game developers, and helping take Made in India games to the world.
As we look ahead, we hope the Government of India will introduce measures to adequately support this next phase of growth. Online skill gaming companies, which have flourished amid phenomenal investor interest, are well-placed to create jobs in roles ranging from VFX designing to software development. The Budget should consider levying a lower tax slab than the existing 18% to aid this. With esports a medal event at the Asian Games, and continuing to gain prominence, this will also help incentivise a greater number of professionals to get into esports and represent the country at global tournaments of this stature.
The industry will also benefit from a fund that can provide capital to talented developers and designers, putting India on the path to becoming the hub for game development globally. Access to infrastructure will be crucial in this regard. This can be achieved by establishing specialised AVGC Centres and Universities for talented designers, visual artists, and developers who may have the capabilities but not the resources to build world-class games. Lastly, we hope that this year will bring more clarity from a regulatory standpoint. Online skill gaming suffers from a lack of differentiation from prohibited categories and games of chance. A uniform policy will be welcome and provide much-needed stability to the sunrise sector.
Aakrit Vaish, Co-Founder & CEO, Haptik
“Due to the increased push toward digitalization, the usage of AI across industries has increased remarkably. While the previous two budgets had recognized the importance of technology in shaping the new India, we now anticipate opportunities and significant government efforts to locate India as one of the world’s preferred AI attractions this year. Considering this, we hope this time too the Finance Minister will put special emphasis on AI and technology for future ready solutions. We at Haptik.ai are optimistic about the center’s vision for a digital strong Bharat and are looking forward to favorable measures that will boost the tech ecosystem in India.”
Jesal Doshi, Deputy CEO, B Medical Systems
“One of the expectations is for increased allocation in the healthcare sector – across the entire infrastructure, specifically for immunization. COVID-19 is far from over and it is vital that the country is well prepared to fight the pandemic and any future pandemics, and a reliable medical cold chain is critical for the success of any immunization program. We believe that creating a sub-industry for medical cold chain and separating it from commercial refrigeration, along with reduced GST rates could further boost the sector. The government should reduce import duties on critical components that are essential for manufacturing reliable medical cold chain units. This, along with production-linked incentives will help improve the country’s ability to access world-class medical cold chain products and also improve India’s export competitiveness in this industry.
Mughilan Thiru Ramasamy, CEO & Co-founder Skylark Drones
2021 has been a great year for UAVs with the introduction of new drones rules and PLI scheme. The global pandemic has accelerated digitisation and the digital shift offers a great opportunity for the drone industry to flourish and grow in the years to come. Businesses and other stakeholders have started realising the exciting possibilities that drones offer and we have witnessed a significant increase in usage of UAVs by the government and enterprises across sectors.
Today, both enterprises and the government are realising the economic and social opportunities that India’s widespread and dispersed geospatial assets can provide to the nation. UAVs offer an ideal compromise between scalability, economic feasibility, immunity to error and productivity compared to aerial data obtained from satellites and terrestrial data from scanners. The faster adoption of UAVs is therefore critical to realise the potential of these geospatial assets. The country would also benefit from a structured training system for aspirants who want to join the UAV industry, thereby accelerating job creation. The market has great potential and will need trained professionals to realise the aim of making India the global drone hub by 2030. Initiatives must be taken to introduce more training institutes for the industry. We are hopeful that Budget 2022 allocates more tax and non-tax incentives to the UAV sector to catalyse the growth of the industry and have a positive and cascading effect across the enterprise and social ecosystems.
Siddharth Chaturvedi, Director at AISECT Group
For Higher Education, the government should allocate funds to promote research, the establishment of the National Research Foundation that can fund research in both Govt and Private Institutions, with investment in the Faculty Development and National Mentoring Programme as envisaged under the NEP. Creation of dedicated funds for Ed-tech startups/ initiatives that are trying to build content and programmes for Indian learners from tier-2 and Tier-3 markets; Increased collaboration for the NEAT platform and activate the National Education Technology Fund planned under NEP. There should also be increased investment in the internationalization of higher education and attracting more students to “Study in India”.
In this budget, the government should Rework GST from 18% to 5% on skilling programmes and pay special attention to Skills and Vocational Training. They should strengthen the Skill Hub Scheme further and allocate funds for greater outreach and coverage of students under skill training as per NEP provisions. One of the prime focuses of the Budget should be to facilitate investments for creating content for skills training in vernacular languages. An increased outlay should be towards the promotion of the Apprenticeship programme for wider coverage of students and MSME segment, while promoting Skills as a public good, integrating skills as part of all formal education as per NEP. The government should also fund centres of excellence in dedicated areas of skilling across Govt and Pvt Institutions. The budget should also increase its focus and outlays on e-government projects and initiatives to improve transparency & convenience and should seek and promote local CSP (Citizen Service Points) partnerships for the last-mile delivery of G2C (Govt to citizen) services.
Jayant Khosla, MD & Group Head of VLCC Health Care Limited
The adverse economic impact and the oft repeated lives-versus-livelihood debate apart, the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has amply demonstrated that being healthy and fit has become more consequential than ever before, with now more and more people across age groups embracing proactive health management and giving attention to nurture their mind, body and soul. The Government would do well to capitalize on this trend.
Historically, resource allocations for the Healthcare sector in the annual Union budget have been overwhelmingly skewed towards curative healthcare. It is now time that that preventive healthcare gets larger attention while planning these allocations for the sector. Investment in preventive healthcare will help increase longevity and overall productivity of people. Preventive healthcare check-ups could be made mandatory and diseases could be treated with subsidized medicines and access to better health enhancement services such as wellness clinics, dietary consultations and sports activities, etc. The spend on preventive healthcare activities should be considered for tax exemption up to a limit in addition to mediclaim insurance which is covered for curative measures. It is worth encouraging investment in preventive healthcare measures which will considerably reduce the curative health spend in a higher proportion.
Also like curative service providers are provided exemptions from GST, we could also include this to preventive healthcare services providers like wellness clinics and obesity management services in order to make it more accessible.
Aditya Kushwaha, CEO and Director, Axis Ecorp said, “Growth in the real estate sector is essential for the growth of the economy. We are hoping that the government will introduce deep policy reforms that will help in accelerating the growth in real estate, especially at this juncture. The pandemic has played a significant role in changing the perception of home-ownership for all, especially for the NRIs. In the last couple of years, the demand from the NRI segment has risen sharply. In order to encourage this segment, we propose that the government should consider revising the applicable tax deducted at source (TDS) on property transactions for NRIs. This will not only boost investment in the sector but also help our country to build its forex reserves. There has been an uptick in rental housing as people continue to work from anywhere (WFA). To further promote the rental segment, we propose that the government should offer taxation benefits for tenants which could include enhancement in HRA Tax Exemption.”
Vinit Dungarwal, Director at AMs Project Consultants Pvt. Ltd. said, “This year’s budget is crucial as the demand in the real estate sector, especially in the residential segment, has just started to witness a revival post the pandemic-induced slowdown. The continued intervention by RBI and holding on to the interest rates have helped in demand generation in the real estate sector and we are expecting the budget 2022 to also focus on aspects of demand generation. We believe that the escalating prices of critical raw materials such as iron, cement can have an adverse impact on this growth momentum. The government should consider reducing GST on these to offset the price rise. Overall, we believe that the government should continue to focus on infrastructure and investments because that will help in generating jobs and lead to the economic growth of the country.”
Manjari Singh, Co-founder, The Chhaunk
With many of these cloud kitchen companies coming under the ambit of GST due to an explosion in popularity. The GST council has clarified in its circular that cloud kitchens provide the same services that a restaurant does, and as such, they would be covered under the definition of a restaurant under the act. cloud kitchen firms charge GST at the rate of 5%, without taking any input tax credit (ITC), under the GST composition scheme. Alternatively, they can charge GST at the rate of 18% if they want to claim the input tax credit. This makes taxation complicated for cloud kitchen owners. In addition, Due to such tax aversions, the small players in the sector might end up paying taxes irrespective of the revenue slab caps.
As a cloud kitchen owner, we would expect some tax relief until a certain revenue hits the sheets so that as business owners, we can show growth reflecting on the performance of the overall industry.
Secondly, any cloud kitchen operation requires a purchase of machines & appliances which can be subject to machinery endowment schemes under manufacturing assistance from the government which is not reflected yet. There also needs to be a defined definition of qualification & definition of cloud kitchen which is currently defined under “e-commerce food business operator” making even last-mile delivery operators run as cloud kitchens which is not the exact case.
The scrutiny of the restaurants is not as per any predefined standard or guideline, which we seek from the officials so that substandard operations in the name of cloud kitchen can be scrapped.
To bring to notice, According to a report by RedSeer Management Consulting, cloud kitchens are set to be a $2 billion industry in India by 2024. According to DataLabs by Inc42, the food ordering market of India is expanding at a CAGR of 16% to reach $17 billion by 2023. The projected market size of cloud kitchens is expected to reach $1.05 billion by 2023. Such numbers seem to be important for the government to bring positive reforms.
On a positive note, cloud kitchens being able to get an MSME certificate brings an advantage of taking the benefits under the scheme.
Overall, we propose a better formal structure on the investment subsidiary, tax reforms & operations for the cloud kitchen owners.
Sahil Dharia – Founder & Chief Executive- Soothe Healthcare
“India is at the inflection point of a COVID recovery phase coupled with a ‘demographic dividend’ opportunity. For both reasons – internal of giving jobs to its millions of youth and external to be able to balance emerging geo-political compulsions, India needs to leapfrog to a double digit GDP growth rate.Accordingly, industry expects meaningful efforts on two fronts– Simplification of Regulation and a Push for Make in India.Simplification of regulations specially with respect to unlocking Land, Labour & Capital use will create an overall ‘encouraging’ environment for entrepreneurs to take risk and business to thrive given the large domestic opportunity.Make in India is the pointed edge of that weapon that gives jobs, builds capacity, reduces our fiscal deficit and maybe even helps build technological prowess in time. These are all essential ingredients if India wants to project as a global power.
Flat GST Rate:
A major simplification drive for instance, a flat GST rate will go a long way in creating an impetus for a cyclical bull run in the industry. Moreover, there are anomalies in GST, for example, in the feminine hygiene sector with GST on sanitary pads being ‘zero’ the input tax credit can’t be availed by industry, making the transaction tax inefficient thereby reducing the growth CAGR.
Though manufacturing-based companies in India appreciate no Zero GST on sanitary pads, it is still significantly affected by high raw material and manufacturing costs. Hence, we look for some relaxation in this area.
Government support towards Non- Tech Companies to push Make in India Agenda:
To promote Make in India, the government should encourage more investment in the non-Tech companies. Right now, capital is increasingly being deployed towards Tech companies majorly Fintech. Government investments via e.g SIDBI serves the purpose of crowding capital into a sector which is already getting more than sufficient attention.
Indian entrepreneurs need this support to shift the materials supply chain from China and sell products not only via the internet economy but also offline for easy access to a large population residing in the hinterland of Bharat.
Mortgage Free Loans to Small Entrepreneurs:
Lastly, banks need to reduce formalities and provide small entrepreneurs with loans without a collateral. The CGTSME for instance can be increased from the current max 1 crore to 5 crore and make any MSME business eligible for it. An environment where small entrepreneurs can get loans without having to mortgage any personal asset will drive growth of new businesses as well as expansion of existing businesses and unlock the potential of our robust trading & manufacturing sector. If we get just a couple of things right, then the momentum we can build in the next decade will be comparable to the ‘great leap forward’ of China in the 90’s and Indian economy will still grow at 5-7% in the coming decade. This can truly solidify India’s position in the global pecking order.”
Neeraj Gupta, Founder, and CEO, Genes2Me Pvt Ltd
Health was one of the major focuses of the Government last year, and we are routing for the same in Budget 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic’s teachings highlight the urgent need to capitalize on health, which is no longer an option, but a necessity. The healthcare sector is anticipating a good Union Budget, and hoping that the Covid -19 scenario will be turned into an opportunity to prioritize and implement structural changes that would benefit the general public. The Government should propose interest subsidies, lower GST on clinical trials and research activities, to boost innovation and R&D. Over the next few years, the government should increase public healthcare spending from 1.8 percent of GDP to at least 6 Percentage. The priority should be on the expansion of physical, remote access healthcare facilities as well as digital health and telemedicine. Also, the Covid testing and vaccine budget should be increased.
Shailesh Guntu, CEO – Milann Fertility & Birthing Hospitals
Allocating a sufficient budget for the healthcare sector is extremely important as it has a significant impact on the overall economy. With increasing lifestyle problems and diseases, it is predicted to have a huge impact on lifestyle-refining health care expenses in the coming years. Dropping fertility rates in both sexes is one of the alarming concerns, and therefore, the government should spend more on customised medicines as they show potential for progress. It is crucial to allocate funds for genetic research and the development of resources to conduct refined studies around genetics, as customised medicines can only be prescribed after genetic profiling. Due to unhealthy lifestyle patterns, childbirth would require expert care and infrastructure support in the future. The government should consider developing a long-term approach for implementing a system to deal with future pandemic situations, and it would require adequate funding for this sector to have healthy adults in the country.
Anand. K, CEO, SRL Diagnostics
“The pandemic has brought the diagnostic industry into focus. We have realised the importance of accurate testing and how accurate lab insights can actually bring down health and hospital costs for a patient. It is high time the government looks at minimum quality standards for the industry and also appoint a nodal agency to standardise lab tests across the country. Standardising test codes by adopting LOINC Codes and homogenising lab report formats can help patients as well as clinicians.
The government could look at reducing the high custom duty on the import of diagnostic equipment and kits. This can help large laboratories like SRL to improve efficiencies and increase investments in R&D. Easing the cost burden by giving input tax credit for GST will aid the entire healthcare industry to reduce input costs.
We have also witnessed some level of shortage of kits for COVID and COVID allied tests during the first two waves as we are dependent on imports and international logistics. Taking a cue from the CLIA standards in the US for lab developed tests, our regulatory bodies like CDSCO can open up the regulatory framework that will help laboratories build indigenous tests customised to the Indian population, encourage more research and foster innovation. This will reduce our dependence on imported kits for laboratory tests. India could become self-reliant in test kits in a few years with the right kind of support from the policymakers and the government.
The government could also look at collaborating on public private partnerships. SRL has executed large projects in Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and these partnerships have greatly benefited the citizens of those states. Private healthcare providers with huge infrastructure and experience in delivering high quality service can truly help deliver quality diagnostics and wellness to the masses. Policymakers can customize health delivery to districts, cities and towns by harnessing the big data generated by laboratories. PPPs for such collaborations could be useful as labs can provide actionable health insights that can improve the health indicators of a particular state.
We also hope that the government will look at instituting an official council that can help establish credibility and credentials of medical laboratory professionals and allied health professionals. In absence of any regulatory legal mechanism to oversee the educational and professional standards, educational institutions have been mushrooming unabatedly across the country. As seen in the pandemic, along with doctors, medical lab and allied health professionals are the backbone of the industry and it is important to provide avenues for up-skilling and reskilling by way of continuous technical education.”
Aman Puri, Founder, Steadfast Nutrition-
“India has the lowest public healthcare expenditure in the world. The health expenditure has only been between 1.2 to 1.8% of the GDP all these years as compared to the world average of 6%. Covid-19 has put the spotlight on this hitherto neglected sector. The second wave brought about a collapse of the healthcare sector in many parts of the country. The Omicron wave has shown us that the virus is constantly evolving and can still overwhelm the healthcare system. Hence, our expectation from this year’s budget would be to allocate more funds to healthcare in order to strengthen primary, secondary as well as tertiary healthcare, public health delivery, and research. Notwithstanding the pandemic, the government allocated only 1.8% of the GDP to health in last year’s budget. The National Health Policy 2017 had recommended this be increased to 2.5 to 3% of the GDP. Given the Covid-19 situation, the allocation should be up to 5% of the GDP in this year’s budget. There should also be increased budgetary allocation to the pharmaceuticals industry to remove its current dependence on China and other countries for imports of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients. Lakh crores of investment are required and not the current amount of hundred crores.
Covid-19 has also highlighted the role of nutraceuticals- particularly immunity boosters- as the first line of defence against the disease. Vitamin D, fish oil, multivitamins, and zinc supplements have been prescribed by doctors to Covid patients and survivors. The government should give a further fillip to this industry in this year’s budget to make India ‘Atmanirbhar’ in the manufacturing of nutritional supplements and also an exporter to the world. Moreover, only 70% of India’s population takes less than half the daily recommended dietary allowance of micronutrients. To address the prevalent anaemia and micronutrient deficiency in the country, the government should announce public-private partnerships with the nutraceutical industry to revolutionise the Indian health and wellness market.”
Sunil Yadav, CEO, PlayerzPot
“Online gaming is one of the fastest growing sectors with numerous investments, enormous employment opportunities and immense growth potential in terms of expansion and revenue. The industry was originally scheduled to become a US$122.05 billion industry by 2025, but the pandemic has greatly accelerated and helped this sector to grow tremendously, much sooner than expected. The sector has the potential to transform the way the younger generation learns, consumes content, and gets entertained. We look forward to transparent and progressive regulations that clearly differentiate games of skill from those of chance.
In this budget, we welcome conducive Govt solutions that will help us overcome current industry challenges. We would also welcome clarification on data privacy and third parties to safeguard user privacy and avoid any breaches in the same. With a proper policy structure, legal framework, regulatory ecosystem and data privacy procedures, the online gaming sector can easily support the government’s initiatives under the campaign Digital India, Make in India and contribute remarkably to the economy.”
Taranjeet Singh Bhamra, CEO & Founder, AgNext Technologies-
“2021 was a good year for the agritech sector, which flourished with strong investments and greater adoption of technologies in the market. To support this growth momentum, acute focus on the development of the burgeoning agritech ecosystem is pivotal. We hope that the upcoming budget will prioritize R&D incentivization in agriculture, along with the supportive impetus to allow agritech businesses, particularly start-ups, to scale domestically at a greater pace.
The emerging agritech ecosystem also requires a focus on infrastructure development and governance frameworks to spur more innovation in the sector. Fiscal considerations can be beneficial to facilitate the growth of the Indian agritech sector in 2022.”
Sahil Sheth, Founder & CEO – LIDO Learning.
“Watching the ed-tech sector gain steam in 2021 has been extremely rewarding, and to a substantial extent, we have the government to thank for facilitating the growing ed-tech movement. I hope the upcoming Union Budget helps ed-tech platforms like Lido scale further up. I know the new budget will be all about economic recovery, and empowering the common man, with a focus on job creation, credit growth, and infrastructure development. In education, I’m hoping for a bigger budget allocation so that more and more students can get the educational support they need, and for the integration of technology within traditional learning. A critical component that will play a role in the progress of ed-tech in 2022 is smartphone and Internet penetration, so I hope the Union budget announces programs to solidify Internet infrastructure and ensure last-mile connectivity in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. With so many startups now a part of the ed-tech segment, I am also hoping for a simplified loan approval process for MSMEs. We need robust data protection laws, and ramped up investments and partnerships within the ed-tech sector for further growth this year.”
Siddharth Maurya, Resource Specialist, Expertise Real-Estate and Fund Management:
Real estate is one of the key pillars of the Indian economy contributing around ~ 8% to the overall GDP. The government must acknowledge the important role played by the sector and make deep policy reforms to accelerate growth in realty demand. Currently, concession can be availed in income tax on up to 2 lakhs paid as interest on home loans. This should be revised and increased to build healthy demand in the sector. Likewise, waivers or reductions should be offered on GSTs on raw materials such as cement, steel, etc. Raw material prices are increasing and reduction in GST rates can give a lot of relief to the developer fraternity. Giving infrastructure status to the sector is also long due as it can help in building liquidity in the sector.
Rajamanohar Somasundaram, Founder & CEO Aquaconnect
“The PMMSY has shown some great results since its implementation. To accelerate the Blue Revolution 2.0, we expect a greater push to promote digital solutions across the value chain right from pre-production to post-harvest to bring predictability, efficiency, and traceability. Incentivizing farmers with better subsidies to adopt data-driven farming, farm monitoring & automation tools will eventually ease and accelerate the wider tech adoption and drive the transition of farmers towards modern farming systems with improved productivity.
To achieve the PMMSY targets, the need of the hour is to drive the inclusion of formal finance and insurance in aquaculture. High insurance premiums demotivate the farmers from availing any risk mitigation for their crops, hence subsidizing insurance premiums will help fish and shrimp farmers to mitigate production risks and reduce production costs to a great extent. Further, increasing the fisheries KCC limit from the current range will help farmers meet their farming expenses entirely.”
Raja Vishal Oberoi, CEO at Market Xcel
“MSMEs are the second largest employment generators, providing jobs to around 11 crore people in India. Furthermore, they account for 48% of exports from our country. With the rising cases of omicron and the ongoing restrictions imposed by govt, MSMEs expect financial support from the government to revive the growth of the sector and reforms surrounding import substitutes to promote self-reliance and boost domestic manufacturing. As 30% contributors of the GDP, MSMEs are expecting the government to reduce the compliance burden in all aspects, be it taxes, loans, audits, or licencing. Including green energy as part of the policies formulated for MSMEs will also help create a sustainable economy and decrease domestic reliance on energy imports.”
Prashant Jain, CEO, Oswaal Books
“The foundation of the education system has been shaken by the pandemic but not the will of India. With the right policies and investments in human capital, India holds a key to empower young people to catapult themselves out of this crisis and tread the path of economic and social development.
In most countries, basic education is nowadays perceived not only as a right but a duty. Governments around the world are nowadays widely perceived to be responsible for ensuring the provision of accessible quality education.
As incomes – measured by GDP per capita – are increasing around the world, so are the global resources spent on education in absolute terms.
NEP 2020 is a welcome step by the Center. But FM needs to double down the Education budget to increase the public investment from 3 to 6% of GDP at the earliest. As the youth of India will not remain young forever this demographic dividend opportunity will only be accessible for a couple of decades say till 2030. So, the best way to predict the future is to invest in the present.
And to make our democracy thrive we need contributing citizens for building an equitable, inclusive, plural and economically developed society, if the youth is not educated today, they can never become good citizens of the country. If you do not have good citizens, you will not have good politicians. If you do not have good politicians, you are less likely to have a good future.
So, doubling down on this year’s education budget holds the golden key to contribute to the vision of a vibrant society and global knowledge superpower.”
Vinay Sharma, CEO & Director – Convergia (S Chand Publishers)
“The biggest disruption in the education sector was seen during the pandemic. Though all businesses were impacted, but the education sector faced challenges initially with the online shift. Though the EdTech companies have played an active role with conducting online classes supporting schools and colleges, the challenges of affordability and accessibility still persist when it comes to remote corners of the country.
The Government can play an important role in rolling out a vaccine for kids and other measures to ensure schools can open like in other countries. Also, a reduction in GST on digital content will help improve its usage and penetration. Many path-breaking initiatives in NEP can be implemented if the education budget is increased to make investments in infrastructure and capacity building.”
Tarun Mehta, Co-founder & CEO, Ather Energy
“The demand for electric vehicles continues to surge ahead as consumers reap benefits offered by the FAME II subsidy and tax rebates. To keep up the consumer demand and to drive faster adoption of EVs, we are hopeful that the FAME II subsidy would continue well beyond 2023. The EV sector requires such early bird incentives to accelerate manufacturing and consumer adoption to ensure stability in the coming years as we see new players emerging offering reliable products and value compared to petrol vehicles.
In 2021, the government launched several initiatives including the PLI scheme to enhance the country’s manufacturing capability. However, while the startups form the majority of the EV ecosystem in India and have led the EV revolution from the front, a majority of them are ineligible for the PLI scheme. There is a need to be inclusive in this approach as startups would help open up more opportunities for the industry to help drive growth and innovation in the sector. Similarly, EV manufacturers have highlighted concerns around GST inverted structure and have requested reducing taxes on input costs.
Another key aspect to drive faster EV adoption is the charging infrastructure development to boost consumer confidence. There is a tremendous requirement to mandatorily ensure EV charging infrastructure to be set up in all existing and upcoming housing projects and commercial establishments. Also, incentivising setting up EV charging stations in existing residential areas, housing complexes and commercial establishments will go a long way in setting up the infrastructure.
I feel 2022 is going to be a landmark year for the EV industry and define the roadmap for the coming years. The introduction of progressive policies backed by speedier implementation will drive faster adoption of EVs in the country.
Rajiv K Vij, Founder, Plug Mobility
We expect the budget to be Growth-oriented and to give relief to Commercial Car industry and other sectors which have been badly impacted due to the pandemic and lockdowns.
The Fleet owners/commercial car industry has suffered hugely during the pandemic and while it makes sense to induct Electric cars, the fleet owners are financially stressed and financial sector is maintaining a negative view about the sector to fund Electric cars for commercial fleet segment.
Government must declare EV’s for commercial car industry as a priority sector, implement First Loss Guarantee Scheme for the sector and ensure that the public sector banks and financial institutions offer easy finance with minimal margin money requirement at low interest rates for EV fleets.
Rasesh Seth- Founder of Nextyn
“With the rise in the number of unicorns in 2021, the Government, in their budget must consider the immense potential of the start up community to help attain its goal of the single largest economy in the world. The Government must be committed to building a steady digital ecosystem capable of supporting this astronomical growth. They must also ensure seamless access to funding through government schemes and favourable taxation rates for startups at various stages of growth. The government must work on simplifying procedures for foreign investments, and launch schemes to attract International start ups to investment and create employment in the country.”
Kamal Narayan Omer, CEO IHW COUNCIL
“Amid the Omicron variant that has ushered in a new and disorienting phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the countdown for the Union Budget 2022 has begun. Last year, the Government of India rolled out a slew of people-friendly packages at the height of this pandemic which boosted the economy in an unprecedented manner. This year, too, we all look forward to a budget that will ensure social health protection to the needy and disadvantaged.” “First and foremost, there should be a tax reduction on any form of treatment related to the Coronavirus. Ever since the pandemic struck us, both the Government of India and state governments have provided financial assistance to the infected people and their families. However, it has been seen that many people have been deprived of it. So, providing tax relief for such financial expenses will help all and sundry, especially to the poor citizens. A complete tax relief and an extension of it will also immensely benefit two groups of people. One, the middle-class taxpayers. Two, people who still don’t have medical insurance. While the Section 80D currently allows a deduction of medical expenditure only for senior citizens, the same should be provided to people irrespective of age.”
“Secondly, including all life-saving drugs in the generic category is a must. For instance, every year millions of Indians are diagnosed with different types of cancer. Given the high cost of the life-saving cancer drugs, many patients are financially stretched to the limit while paying out of their own pockets. Therefore, reduction of GST on these drugs are essential.”
“Thirdly, and most importantly, the COVID-19 pandemic has reinstated the importance of having basic healthcare across the country, especially in the rural set-ups. In India, over 75% of the healthcare infrastructure is concentrated in urban areas and there is a serious degradation in the quality or infrastructure in the rural areas. In fact, tens of thousands of patients in the rural areas are still in the hands of quacks and unscientific medical practices. The villagers travel a long distance to the nearest hospital in case of emergencies and the only viable transportation is private transport which many cannot afford because of their financial condition. Therefore, there is a growing need to create and deploy innovative technologies to ensure last-mile delivery of basic healthcare services, even in the hinterlands.”
Amit Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO of NoBroker.com
“The real estate sector has shown extraordinary resilience against the pandemic, and is now riding on a positive growth trajectory. The sector’s buoyancy is attributed to numerous factors like stable property prices, lucrative discounts by builders, and historic low home loan interest rates. And this growth can be accelerated with a few measures that could be considered in this year’s budget,” Amit Agarwal said.
Rs 5 lakh home loan interest
“Home purchase is currently on the priority list for many people. The same was revealed in NoBroker annual real estate survey 2021. As of now, the interest rates on home loans are in the range of 6.5-7 percent per year, but buyers who are looking to avail a loan of over INR 30 lakh cannot claim deduction against the entire interest paid in the initial years due to a cap of Rs 2 lakh per annum against interest rate deduction under section 24(b) of the Act. The need of the hour is to bring in more robust demand in the home-buying segment. Pushing the tax rebate on housing loan interest rates from the current Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 Lakh or above could trigger healthier demand for housing, especially in the affordable and mid-segment categories,” he said.
“Another relevant thing that can be looked at is the definition of affordable housing. While the size of units can be standardized, the standardization of price is not viable across cities. For instance, property prices in Mumbai are significantly higher than those in Kanpur or Kolkata. That is one area the budget could look into and redefine. If the definition of affordable housing be readjusted to city specific standards, it will have a positive impact on the sector,” he added.
Moreover, many benefits have been outlined for the affordable segment over the years. Along these lines, if the government introduces some benefits to the mid-segment housing as well, it would ring in better demand and translate into the faster recovery of the real estate sector.
Section 80C of the Income Tax Act, 1961
“The budget should pay special attention to creating a much healthier banking system to drive accessibility and availability of improved and low-cost credit to home buyers. This can be achieved through priority sector lending categorization of home loans. The budget could focus on amending Section 80C of the Income Tax Act, 1961 to increase the repayment time limit of housing loan principal. This will reduce the burden of home buyers to some extent by allowing them more time to repay the money. It would pull in more buyers in the coming days,” he further added.
GST
“There is also an urgent need to further streamline the Goods and Services Tax, which is applicable at 1% for affordable homes and 5% for other segments. A 1% cap on GST for projects under-construction would aid the quick completion of projects stalled due to financial reasons.
Commercial real estate developers, for example, should be allowed to set off the GST paid on construction materials. Improving the credit availability to smaller developers, who continue to face cashflow challenges due to the pandemic is also an area that requires government stimulus,” he said.
Stamp duty Reduction
“Reduction of stamp duty in Maharashtra has reaped good results. If this can be mirrored in other states too, fence-sitters would be quick to take the plunge, and this would further boost real estate,” he further sought.
GST reductions on raw materials, industry status
“A single window clearance has been due for many years now. Additionally, it is an appropriate time to award industry status to the real estate sector so that it can avail cheaper credit facilities from financial institutions. The budget should also focus on providing GST reductions on raw materials, including cement, steel, etc. Doing so can give a lot of relief to the overall developer community and help it recover faster from the slowdowns caused by COVID-19,” he further added.
“There is a huge opportunity in real estate that would enable faster economic recovery. Despite the pandemic induced-challenges the sector that contributes 8% to the country’s GDP has acted resilient and home-buying is still top priority for a great majority of people for end use as well as for investment. It is time to capitalise on the sentiment by offering some irresistible benefits which we hope budget 2022 will incorporate,” he concluded on Budget 2022 Expectations for Real Estate sector.
Shriya Naheta Wadhwa, Founder, Zama Organics
We anticipate that the Union Budget will concentrate on easing taxation, encouraging investment, and providing more subsidies to startups, which will help generate more income and employment. The development of the agritech ecosystem is critical as well. We expect that the budget will prioritize agricultural R&D incentives, and provide a push that will allow agritech companies, particularly start-ups, to scale domestically at a faster rate. Infrastructure development and governance frameworks must be addressed to drive more innovation in the agritech ecosystem. We also believe that any reforms aimed at enhancing India’s supply chain infrastructure will aid the eCommerce industry’s growth.
Shreyas Hegde, CEO, Viral Fission
The pandemic has accelerated technology adoption across India, transforming how young people access and absorb information. Since 2020, the education sector has witnessed a substantial transition with young professionals and students retreating to the safe confines of the digital realm. We need the future to be more accommodative of such hybrid methods where the youth can not only focus on online learning but also incorporate holistic & experiential learning that helps them upskill. The forthcoming Union Budget should encourage institutions to integrate new-age skills into their curriculum and focus on creating more such avenues that will provide them with the right tools and experiences to become leaders of tomorrow.
Gaurav Agarwal, Co-founder, Gamezop
India’s digital economy is booming and is aiding the country’s recovery from the pandemic.
In the recent past, some states have banned online gaming without differentiating between games of skill and games of chance. We are certain that the central government is cognisant of the contribution of gaming to the GDPs of countries like the US, Japan, and South Korea. Regulatory clarity on games of skill will help the gaming industry grow.
Further, the interest and opportunities in cryptocurrencies are at an all-time high globally. Regulatory clarity around the use of cryptocurrencies by businesses and individuals will be highly appreciated. Given that New Delhi has been supportive of blockchain technologies, and India has high adoption for cryptocurrencies, the government stance on this subject will be closely followed.
Finally, while the government supports exporters through duty credit scrips, preferential rates to exports of digital goods and services will be a welcome move, and one that will strengthen India’s journey to becoming an IT giant.
Sanjay Agarwal, MD & CEO, AU Small Finance Bank
“MSME sector is gradually recovering from the impact of the pandemic and needs continued handholding and policy support to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the evolving global supply chain dynamics. Given the strong employment generation potential of the MSME sector, my humble request is that the upcoming budget should include affirmative measures and schemes to support MSMEs and make access to capital for MSMEs simpler and seamless so that they can play a meaningful role in the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ initiatives of the Government.”
Uday Narang, Chairman and Founder, Omega Seiki Mobility from the Union Budget 2022 “As a part of India’s growing EV industry, we hope that the Union Budget includes lowering of GST rates on raw materials, especially for the EV players. Support for R&D and indigenous technology development while lowering of GST on auto components should be on the top of FM’s agenda list. Allocating funds for the Clean Air Campaign, which could be brought under the Swachh Bharat Mission to create better awareness & improve adoption of electric mobility.
To further strengthen the EV market, the government should consider categorizing EVs in the priority lending sector. It will make EVs more affordable for the users & help in incentivising the whole transition.
Export concessions can also be looked at to support the Indian EV manufacturers like us, so that we can tap new markets, making India not just ‘Aatmanirbhar’ but a global powerhouse. The EV sector is growing, but it needs continuous support from the government via better policy curation, implementations so that maximum benefits can be passed on to the end users.“
Rajat Deshpande, Co-founder, and CEO of FinBox
Fintech viability for the most part is piggybacking on operating at scale. Therefore, internet and telecom penetration into India’s villages are crucial, both for fostering financial inclusion and enabling business viability. The secret to unlocking higher fintech adoption can be nothing but a strong public-private collaboration that solves India’s problem of reach and access.
In short: Credit starved Indians beyond the metropolitans are hankering to be included in the formal financial system but it’s up to the government’s enablement through special-purpose funds, vehicles, and regulations to give the digital lending sector the tailwinds it needs to create a UPI-like revolution in lending.
Saahil Goel (CEO & Co-founder of Shiprocket)
Quote – “We have a lot of expectations of support to the start-up ecosystems which can really boost the economy. There should be a single window for all the relevant registrations like company incorporation, shop establishment, GST registration, MSME certificate etc. which will help save time, efforts, and money considerably. For start-ups, ESOP’s are key to attract & incentivize talent, these should not be taxed on vesting as recipients do not have ready cash in the hands at that point, the taxation should be on the final Sale of shares. Further, there is a deduction of TDS by the e-commerce operators on sale of goods, which leads to blockage of capital – that should be done away with. India’s Logistics cost are high. Steps towards Subsuming petroleum products under the GST regime have been under discussion for long; these will reduce fuel cost and progress needs to be made in that direction”
Kartik Shah, CEO, Coldrush Logistics
“The logistics industry is dealing with non-predictable fuel prices, and its non-inclusion in the GST regime is already making it hard for companies in this space. This sector also has a higher CAPEX cost, making the liquidity cycle more stringent for businesses. Currently, the processed food segment is growing rapidly and needs reefer transport. But the GST on fully built reefer vehicles is 18%; thus, reducing it would significantly encourage businesses to invest in it and thrive in their journeys. Similarly, extending the subsidy scheme on these vehicles would also be a step in the right direction and help players operate more seamlessly without any financial burden.
Moreover, the central and state governments currently have huge unused land parcels at prime locations. These can be leveraged to create warehouses and cold storage. The government has also pushed for the use of solar in this sector. However, it is not viable for medium-level players like us. As a result, the government can incentivize this and explore other possibilities to make solar power duty-free for cold storage providers. This move will serve a bigger goal of reducing carbon footprints and building a sustainable ecosystem for businesses.”
Ashish Agarwal (Director & CEO at SEROS Logistics)
Quote – India has been pushing for an auto-fuel transition with the twin objectives of containing emissions as well as diversifying away from India’s rising dependence on crude oil imports. In line with the Hon PM’s vision of a Gas based economy, we expect the government to induce a conducive environment for the development of Natural Gas as a fuel in the Automotive sector.
A 5% GST rate for the sale and purchase of vehicles powered with LNG/CNG engines similar to EV can be levied in the same direction.
The government could also look at amending the Motor Vehicle Regulations to issue BLUE registration plates for CNG/LNG powered commercial vehicles (similar to GREEN registration plates issued for EV) and BLUE plate registration would qualify for exemption of road tax and waiver in toll. This will promote the adoption of Gas-powered CVs
Lastly, we are hoping there will be a reduction in import duty of LNG CVs as LNG powered vehicles are used globally and regarded as the most viable clean alternative to diesel for long haul trucking
Kapil Makhija, CEO Unicommerce
“Amidst the pandemic, e-commerce has become an integral part of India’s retail industry. India has the world’s fastest-growing e-commerce and SaaS markets. Both sectors have garnered attention from investors and companies across the globe. We are an e-commerce focused SaaS solution company and we expect that the upcoming budget should focus on increasing digitization in Tier-II+ cities of India. The young aspirational Indian’s from these regions have started adopting e-commerce extensively and if the government continues to focus on the infrastructure there is immense growth potential. Also, we expect that the government will further provide clarity on the tax obligations of e-commerce companies and brands as it will help them further streamline their operations. We also believe that logistics infrastructure will play a pivotal role and any reform in improving India’s supply chain infrastructure will help in further driving the growth of India’s e-commerce industry.”
Sanjay Kaul, Founder & CEO, Xpand
“India’s technology sector, which is famed for its cutting-edge innovative capabilities and global success has been working diligently to combat the pandemic without causing commercial disruption. The industry is expecting a deduction for working from home/remote working set up and exemptions on medical and insurance expenditure. The government should consider 5% GST on health insurance to improve coverage, especially in rural areas. Additionally, the government should provide better allocation towards social security schemes-especially MNREGA and improve the digital literacy of women in rural areas. Salaries paid to people working in rural areas are to be deducted from the taxable income of a company. We are expecting an increase in credit for agriculture to ensure farmers’ interest. To encourage more rural citizens to build their own houses in rural areas, interest on the loan taken by them should be completely exempted from taxation.”
Kinner N Sacchdev, Co-founder and CEO, Knorish
Quote – When Benjamin Franklin was thinking of a bright future for America, he decided to focus mostly on building the Public Library System. The gurukul system of ancient India was also based on the premise that the ‘Guru’ is the best source of knowledge and learning. As India stands on the verge of becoming a global powerhouse in all spheres, we are not just competing with ourselves but the world altogether. Today, the thirst for good learning content amongst students, lifelong learners and corporates is witnessing unprecedented growth. So if we are to compete with the best in this global economy, access to learning that teaches new-age skills needed to survive and thrive in the 21st century must be made available to all. As such, I believe that GST on all online learning programs and enablers should be exempted from GST to make it more affordable for all.
Shiv Sharma, VP International, Stocktwits.
Quote – Based on our social media surveys, most retail investors “avoid trading” during the Budget, likely because many own blue-chip, secular winners for the long-term. Meanwhile, active retail traders usually ride momentum on sectors expected to hear bullish commentary in the Budget session. This year our data shows retail investors expect renewable energy to see increased focus. Retail investors are also hoping for relaxing of Long Term Capital Gains Tax and clarity on crypto tax policy.
Anil Nagar, (Founder and CEO at Adda247)
Quote – The companies in the startup ecosystem will play a significant role in transforming the country’s image. The EdTech industry has flourished at an accelerated rate as it broke new territory and entered tier 3 and 4 cities of the country. It will play a major role in educating our workforce for a better tomorrow. This is possible only if we make online education affordable to all. The Government should support this through a lower GST, while focusing on creating a strong digital infrastructure to improve the quality & experience of online education for students in cities as well as remote areas. The government should also forge alliances with Edtech companies to accelerate the learning outcomes with the help of cutting-edge technologies in the education ecosystem.
Saurabh Srivastava (Chairman at Indian Angel Network)
Quote – The startup ecosystem showed commendable grit and spirit to overcome the seismic COVID challenge and turn it into an opportunity instead. We welcome the Prime Minister’s gesture of declaring 16th Jan as the National Startup Day signalling recognition of startups as the backbone of New India. Our expectations from the upcoming union budget are that the capital gains tax regime for listed companies be extended to startups as these investments create more value and new jobs, are illiquid and inherently much riskier. Also, ESOPs given by startups should be taxed at the time of sale, instead of at exercise as the shares are illiquid and employees have no resources to pay the taxes on a notionally high value at that time. And finally, in order to enable India based startups to compete globally, they should be allowed to raise capital by listing on overseas stock exchanges.
Padmaja Ruparel (Co-founder of Indian Angel Network & Founding Partner, IAN Fund)
Quote – India has today grown to the third-largest startup ecosystem in the World with more than 60k startups and 42 unicorns, with 4 of them emerging in the very first month of 2022. With over 2250 startups added in 2021 and $24.1 billion investment it is very clear that startups are one of the key drivers of the economy. We expect Union Budget 2022 to be an enabling budget for the startup economy. As India is the fastest-growing startup ecosystem, we need an enabler for the country to become the fastest growing angel investor ecosystem. This can only happen if investor exits are eased and therefore expect the removal of section 281 for overseas buyers of shares of Indian Unlisted Companies, amendment of Section 79 so that acquired companies are allowed to carry forward the losses once acquired.
Rajat Deshpande, Co-founder, and CEO of FinBox
“Fintech viability for the most part is piggybacking on operating at scale. Therefore, internet and telecom penetration into India’s villages are crucial, both for fostering financial inclusion and enabling business viability. The secret to unlocking higher fintech adoption can be nothing but a strong public-private collaboration that solves India’s problem of reach and access.
In short: Credit starved Indians beyond the metropolitans are hankering to be included in the formal financial system but it’s up to the government’s enablement through special-purpose funds, vehicles, and regulations to give the digital lending sector the tailwinds it needs to create a UPI-like revolution in lending.”
Shachindra Nath, Executive Chairman and Managing Director, U GRO Capital
Union Budget 2022-23 is highly crucial to align Indian economy’s growth trajectory. It is essential that the Hon’ble Finance Minister announces effective measures to enable speedy recovery and growth of the MSMEs, considering the sector’s significant contribution to the economy. It is encouraging to see Government’s support for the MSME sector in last 12-15 months and we believe the efforts will only become more prominent in the time to come.
In past few years, operationally nimble and technologically oriented NBFCs and Fintechs have deepened the credit penetration to the underserved regions of the country. Hence, in the upcoming budget, policymakers should provide due consideration to boost liquidity support to the NBFCs as well as encourage frameworks like co-lending, which will greatly boost the reach of financial institutions and progress in the financial inclusion imperative. EASE 4.0 talks about Co – Lending between Banks and NBFC as a means to increase the credit penetration, however the treatment of Tax Deduction at Source (TDS) treatment for NBFC and Banks are different and that is proving to be a major operational challenge to accelerate credit. It is expected that TDS rules would be harmonised between Banks and NBFCs.
Debajit Sensharma, Group CFO, Paras Healthcare
To begin with, we would like to thank the government for the support provided during and ongoing tough times. Going forward, we expect that the government should look at increasing the healthcare expenditure above 2.5% of GDP and extend the National Health Protection Scheme to all migrant workers, in addition to the BPL population. The need of the hour is to improve healthcare funding with subsidized loans, incentivizing CSR investment by making it a tax-deductible expense, and allocating land for new hospitals. The government should also look at allocating a budget to include trauma centers in Primary Health Centers (PHCs) and Community Health Centers (CHCs) as trauma systems result in high financial costs. Our country has the youngest workforce, but with dropping fertility rates and increasing mutations, there will be a huge spike in healthcare expenses over the next couple of decades. The incidence of lifestyle diseases is doubling every 10 years. Therefore, it is imperative for the government to get genome mapping done, which will assist in collecting the much-needed data to discover cures for complex conditions. In order to achieve the same, the government should promote public-private partnerships for genome mapping projects. Another important aspect for the government to consider is including all the life-saving drugs in the generic category and providing tax cuts on these drugs. However, providing adequate funding for the healthcare sector is needed at this hour, as it will have a substantial impact on the whole economy.”
Dr. Ankit Gupta, Managing Director, Park Group of Hospitals
“The healthcare sector should be the focus of this year’s budget. India is facing a new challenge in the form of Omicron, and many more Covid waves are expected in the coming years. As a result, it is critical to strengthen the healthcare infrastructure. In the budget, more funds should be allocated to health expenditure. Incentives should be provided to the private sector so that they can establish Covid Care Centers. A Medical Innovation Fund should be set up to provide capital to companies promoting digital healthcare infrastructure. Many startups are utilizing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to provide detailed reports to patients regarding medical conditions. India is also a popular medical tourism destination due to the availability of skilled labour. Hence, the government should ease visa restrictions and create more green corridors in order to promote medical tourism. We hope that the upcoming budget will serve as a source of motivation for the entire sector, fostering new innovations and development.”
Praveen Sikri, CEO of Ikris Pharma Network
“In the shadow of the pandemic and the ongoing battle against the virus, the budget should focus on the following areas: first, healthcare expenditure as a proportion of GDP must be raised to at least 2.5% if not more. Second, in view of the rising frequency of infectious diseases, the government must allocate enough resources for genetic and genome research, epidemiological studies besides hiking allocations for general healthcare-related R&D. Third, the budget must also provide for increased investment into infrastructure-building in terms of more critical care and ICU facilities and diagnostic labs along with ambulatory and home care. Fourth, smaller towns and the hinterland too should get sufficient public and private health infrastructure. Accordingly, the private sector should be encouraged with easy and inexpensive loan availability, tax exemptions and other financial and policy support through this budget. Fifth, similar encouragement must also be extended to the pharma and medical device sector. Sixth, the budget should also earmark funds for ramping up infrastructure for medical education and training with an eye on elevating the quality and quantity of our healthcare manpower.”
Dr. Gauri Agarwal, Founder & Director, Genestrings Diagnostic and Seeds of Innocence
“During the pandemic, medical diagnostics emerged as the first line of disease containment and the most important public health measure. The World Health Organization’s T3: Test. Treat. Track. initiative to combat COVID-19 has brought diagnostics to the forefront, emphasizing the growing need for better testing capabilities and the importance of quality. People have begun to understand the importance and needs of molecular/genetic testing, and it has invariably resulted in increased investments by large private labs and establishment of more RT PCR labs across the country. In this sense, the government’s collaboration with the private sector, while refocusing on life science, healthcare, and diagnostics, will play a critical role in deciding the future of diagnostics in the country.
Public Private Partnership models as have been proposed earlier by National Health Authority, are promising initiatives of mutual efforts, whereby models for partnership with private diagnostic companies were proposed for bettering the infrastructure, services and quality of testing in Tier II and Tier III Indian Cities. We advocate the principle of introducing high end molecular/genetic testing at a micro level in Indian Cities for reducing the difficulties in accessing quality testing and for strengthening regional medical infrastructure at a micro level. We further are staunch believers of developing indigenous testing technologies, medical devices and related infrastructure to promote an environment of Research and Development in this field. Accordingly, with the help of the Government’s grants, we can collectively formulate and implement cheaper alternatives to expensive genetic testing.
For the IVF industry, The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, 2021 is a quantum leap by the Union Government to promote the Indian IVF industry. However, it is pertinent to focus that the nodal concern still remains to be the general people of the country and their struggles with access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies, popularly, IVF. The problem is complemented by a failure by leading insurance companies to cover infertility, which makes it highly difficult for general people to avail these services. Recent research in this field has constantly warned us about the expected increase in the infertility rates of the country. Hence, it becomes significant to undertake preventive measures against this. Accordingly, increasing accessibility to ARTs in rural areas and providing more incentives to people to avail these services will come as a boon to the Indian IVF industry which is expected to become a $12 Billion Global Market in the coming Financial Year.”
Dipika Jaikishan, Co-Founder & COO of Basis
“It’s no secret that women who run businesses are far and few in-between. Incentives for women entrepreneurs and investors backing women-run businesses will be a welcome change. While budgets year-on-year have been catering to the asks of the start-up ecosystem, a systemic nudge to bring more entrepreneurs into the fold should be encouraged by establishing SOPs in place — allowing women to take the plunge when it comes to running a business”.
Aanan Khurma, Co-Founder & CEO of Wellversed
“It’s futile to expect anything from the government when it comes to start-ups. Even the so-called Startup India Programme is of little actual help to entrepreneurs. For e.g. The government proudly claims that start-ups will not have to pay income tax for the first seven years of its incorporation. Now any real entrepreneur knows that anything worth building runs in losses for the first few years of it’s incorporation and hence such policies are just a way for government officials to pat each other’s back in the boardroom (probably over chai and samosas). So we don’t really think or care about what the government has on the charts for Start-ups as we understand that we are on our own.”
Ashish Aggarwal, Founder & CEO of VA-YU
“The EV industry is in need of funding and the government can play a major role by bringing it into priority sector lending and by financially supporting start-ups in this sector. GST on battery packs should be aligned with the GST on EV’s and the government should implement a cohesive strategy for the domestic manufacture of EV batteries. And lastly, while tax incentives are offered to individuals on EV purchase, the same should also be available for corporates and start-ups.”
Subodh Garg, CFO and Growth leader Pickrr
With India aiming to be a $5 trillion economy by 2030, the logistics sector will be a crucial enabler in achieving this. According to the reports, currently, the Indian logistics sector contributes 14.4 percent to the country’s GDP and incurs a cost of 14 percent of the GDP against the global average of approximately 8 percent. Keeping these numbers under consideration, we expect the focus of this year’s budget to be growth-oriented for the supply chain industry. We foresee new policies being introduced to help strengthen logistics-related infrastructure and rationalize the dwell time across all major ports and customs to expedite connectivity.
The government should also make a concrete move on the National Logistics Policy as it will help positively impact the logistics industry.
While the previous two budgets had recognized the importance of technology in shaping the new India, we now anticipate opportunities and significant government efforts to recognize India as one of the world’s preferred AI and SaaS attractions this year.
Gaurav Mangla, CEO Pickrr
The year 2022 started positively, with our Prime Minister announcing a day dedicated to start-ups.
Indian start-ups have played a vital role in the economy’s growth, and this base continues to witness steady growth. With technology playing a crucial role in shaping the country’s start-ups, the Union Budget 2022-23 should introduce start-up-friendly policies and tax relaxations to enable innovation and ease-of-doing-business and reduce compliance costs. We hope this year’s budget will continue to deliver on the government’s vision under Start-up India to focus on digitalization, favourable infrastructure development, and strengthening the ecosystem.
Ashok Patel, CEO and Founder Max Ventilator
“Apart from the need to raise the share of healthcare as a proportion of GDP to at least 2.5 percent in the upcoming budget, the government must also further build on its earlier policy incentives such as PLI schemes and dedicated medtech parks by increasing allocations. In fact, the government should ensure that the smaller medical device players also get included and can benefit from the special schemes and offers that it has extended with a view to catalyze domestic manufacturing and to achieve the larger goal of self-reliance. Given the repeated occurrences of infectious diseases of epidemic scale in recent years, the government should also invest sufficiently into genetic and genomic research, epidemiology and vaccine research besides increasing allocation for broader healthcare R&D. Of course, the diagnostics and preventive health device segment must be given as much policy and financial support as possible. Further, the budget could also incentivize the consumables as well as medical device accessory segments which hold huge promise for the domestic sector. At the same time, adequate allocation must be made for training of personnel required for the deployment and usage of critical care equipment such as ventilators and other similar lifesaving devices.”
Nikkhil K Masurkar, Executive Director, ENTOD Pharmaceuticals
“The pharmaceutical and medical devices industry has gained significant momentum owing to the government’s AatmaNirbhar Bharat initiative. The Union Budget 2022 is expected to build on the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes and encourage continued investments in capacity expansion of sensitive APIs, drug intermediates, complex excipients, biopharmaceuticals and medical devices. While the draft R&D policy focuses on creating an ecosystem for research and innovation, certain tax incentives for the investment in ‘R&D focused funds’, set up for R&D based activities, could be introduced. India should participate in the innovation area at a global level. Along with a scheme similar to the PLI, the government needs to consider tax incentives to attract innovation. Interaction with industry and global players can help India’s pharmaceutical sector to move from a generic manufacturer to an innovator developer and manufacturer for the world. Apart from that, Technology/digital transformation is another key area of focus. In fact, it would be the building block for the much-expected universal healthcare in India. Presently, GST on drugs is taxed under four categories – nil, 5%, 12% and 18%. While a few life-saving drugs are taxed at nil rates, some are taxed at 5 per cent and the majority fall under the 12 per cent GST slab. Extensions of a tax deduction on product development and R&D are some of the other demands of the pharmaceutical sector. The industry also seeks a 150% deduction in tax on in-house R&D.”
Vasanth Madhav Kamath Founder & CEO of Hydrogreens Agri Solutions
“In the upcoming Union Budget, we look forward to the Government announcing stimulus packages for Green projects, especially enabling first loss default guarantees. This would help the first time green bond issuers who may be unable to service the coupon or principal payments and would surely go a long way in inspiring the dairy industry to consider and access more green debt capital, as well as to execute high-quality genuine projects that get the dairy value chain closer to Net-zero.”
Abhishek Goel, CEO & Co-Founder, CACTUS
The recent pandemic has anything but thought us the importance of science and research. As governments across the globe were scrambling in the race for vaccine development, they realized the importance of investing in creating the infrastructure to foster the growth of science, research and imbibing a scientific temper. While the Indian Government is leading the way by initiatives like setting up the NRF, it would be good to see how it can incentivize the private sector, HNI’s to fund R&D in universities, and research institutions to take India to the next level.
Akshay Daftary, Director, SIRO Clinpharm
“Over the last 2 years, the healthcare sector has been at the forefront of all conversations given the large role it has played towards alleviating the harsh effects of this pandemic. We would look forward to an increase in the allocation of budget towards healthcare sector, along with continued support and incentivization in the drug development space. We have clearly seen the important role the healthcare sector has played towards economic revival during the last few months with the impact of COVID-19, which enable a strong bounce back through vaccination and treatment regimens for COVID-19 patients.
In addition, this unprecedented scenario has forced organizations to take a flexible approach of hybrid working, or complete work from home to ensure safety of all employees. In this light, a few tax exemptions/reliefs for employees could go a long way in ensuring they remain satisfied. While companies can provide certain benefits, reimbursements (for electricity, internet expenses) and providing movable assets to ensure work does not get impacted, the tax implication could fall on employees, which could be looked into due to no current tax exemptions. In a normal scenario of working form office, these expenses would have been borne by the company and tax would be levied onto the organization itself.
Kunal Vaid, Founder-Resham Sutra
“We would like to see a more inclusive budget with higher levels of focus on women’s development and on rural employment and livelihood generation, as these sectors currently constitute over 50 percent of the Indian economy. New and fresh ideas are needed to improve income opportunities and to increase the productivity of rural women in the poor and underserved parts of the country. Additionally, the Government must focus on the creation of non-agricultural income streams for bettering livelihoods for the rural women, as well as increase investments in community rural livelihood infrastructure building and development and furthering training infrastructure, including skill training for aspiring micro-entrepreneurs in rural India as well as technical training to the rural producers.
We also strongly feel that the scope of existing schemes/initiatives like textile mega parks need to be broadened and implemented for distributed rural production centres and producer companies — as they are the backbone of the Indian textile industry. Furthermore, the Government should address the need of setting up village-level procurement centres, and prioritize on ensuring easier access to affordable credit for all rural women textile producers with minimum documentation. To this end, including the implementation of schemes like the PM Kisaan to be in the name of women, irrespective of land ownership can be a great step. Lastly, I would like to suggest that the Government should simplify the process of formation of rural-based producer companies and allow partial shareholding to promoter organizations. Such initiatives will go a long way and have a multiplier effect on rural incomes and the economy at large, and these have the potential to further reduce the need for mass migration to urban areas for low-paid, unskilled work.”
Rahul Goel, VP Finance, Moglix
The union budget 2022 should address the double edged challenge of stagflation emerging out of the COVID19 led supply chain disruption in manufacturing while remaining within the boundaries of fiscal prudence. A realistic trade-off between fiscal consolidation and economic growth enablement initiatives to support job creation would be to cap the fiscal deficit at 6% of the GDP. The economy is picking up momentum. As such, growth enablement initiatives should be outcome based, not outlay based and designed to target the long term horizon.
Demand side measures that can cool inflation rates would be to rationalize GST rates on raw materials like iron & steel, cement, fabrics, and petrochemicals. Overall nominal incidence of GST on manufacturing may be rationalized from 18% to 12%. It will go a long way in giving inflation relief to MSME units and strengthening their balance sheets. The budget should continue the streak of endeavors made in the previous budgets to reduce compliance and litigation burdens for MSMEs.
According “Industry” status to the real estate sector is another measure that can be considered. It will enable easy access to credit from lenders for the real estate sector, unlock demand in the affordable housing segment, and boost job creation opportunities for blue collar workers. Raising the income tax deduction limit on home loans from INR 2 lakhs to INR 5 lakhs is another demand generation avenue that the FM may want to consider to boost sentiments of first time home buyers, many of whom are millennials.
On the supply side, the union budget 2022 should continue to focus on the execution of fiscal outlay initiatives that have already been announced. The CAPEX spending on the National Infrastructure Pipeline is one major area where government spending will generate a crowding-in effect in the long term. The PLI schemes have begun to bear fruit in sectors like mobile handset manufacturing. The union budget 2022 will do well to scale up the PLI umbrella for the manufacturing of other categories of white label goods under the Make in India initiative. It will create new growth opportunities for India’s MSMEs in electronics manufacturing that is expected to grow amid heightened demand due to digital adoption for ease of living and doing business.
Sharad Chaudhary, Founder, Dreamz Production House
After the initial blow of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is little doubt that 2021 continued to disrupt the world of events. Those businesses directly related to mass events are facing tough times. With the event industry facing an anomalous situation, we have a lot of expectations from the government to look into its revival and help the event industry strive in these challenging times. The industry is remaining stagnant for almost two years now and the livelihood of millions of people has come to a standstill. Just when we thought we could see some light at the end of the tunnel, we’re back to where we began. Rising covid-19 cases and fresh curbs and lockdown have left the events industry staring at a dismal future yet again. The industry has crashed and still the government doesn’t see the need to protect livelihoods as event industry has been completely ignored. Each state has its own set of protocols making it difficult to organise or plan anything.
In the recent past, the association representatives have regularly shared a set of standard operating procedures (SOPs) with the government, highlighting our readiness for conducting events as well as the importance of the sector in kick-starting the economic engine. The industry has requested the government to take immediate measures to rescue and revive the sector which had come to a standstill due to the Covid-19 related restrictions. Be it a labourer or a contractor, a fabricator or a florist to people who actually get the industry going, there is no relief given to us. We do not come under the purview of any ministry that is looking into us and actually taking cognizance of what we do. The event industry which is trying to get the due recognition that it deserves to stay afloat in these dire times needs to get the status of an organised sector, for us to be heard. Hence industry status is absolutely important for us to stay afloat & excel going forward.
We also hope that the startup-friendly policies should be made simplified to register and there should be a relaxation in the taxation policies and simplified GST returns as well in the upcoming budget. The startup sector will continue to look for the government’s support in helping ease of access to capital, encouraging domestic investment environment, scaling up the business, easy exit processes, and reducing regulatory and compliance burden on startups.
The constant on-again off-again approach that we can’t avoid is having an impact. We know one thing for sure, events will never be the same. However, the interpersonal communication, fostering connections and pleasure associated with physical events can’t be savored in the online space. Also, revenue generation and ROI of virtual events are difficult to gauge and achieve. The core values of events and functions have not changed, and there is a hope that they will be the same in the future either. It’s on all of us now to be ready to produce and execute based on the current landscape. The biggest opportunity now is that we lived through the worst. This time has tested our ability of innovation and agility. Thankfully, now things seem to be far better while we are still, probably not out of the woods completely. It’s amazing to see how the pandemic has brought people together, created unity and given us perspective on how we could be more responsible. Hope we are able to keep supporting each other the same way because it will only mean that we get back on our feet much quicker.
The government should introduce policies that are more inclusive of the private sector and enable their participation more. This will not only be an economically progressive step but will also bring in more transparency into the system. It is also essential that top priority is given to job creation and boosting entrepreneurial activity. The increase in tax slab limit can offer some relief to the common man by giving them more disposable income which in turn will help spur consumption, thereby benefitting multiple industries. Overall we expect that the budget is expansionary and focuses on the nation’s growth, bringing a positive sentiment to the overall economy.
Parag Kulkarni, Managing Director, A. O. Smith India
The consumer durables industry has faced challenges with raw material costs for more than a year, and we are optimistic that the Union Budget will help reduce cost pressures for manufacturers and improve affordability for consumers. The budget may also look at reducing taxes on eco-friendly and energy-efficient products, which could help drive demand and increase consumer adoption of sustainable products.
Water purifiers and water heaters have become essential household items. We expect the budget to help rationalize tax rates on these consumer durable items, increasing the popularity and need for these products in India. We hope that the residential real estate market will also be positively impacted by the budget. Real estate is the second largest market after agriculture, generating large scale employment and supporting multiple allied industries. We are hopeful that the upcoming Union Budget will help usher in a balanced combination of reforms and regulations, which will contribute positively to India’s growth.
Sachin Jain, Managing Director, De Beers India
The Gems and Jewellery sector contributes to 7% of India’s GDP and forms around 12% of our export basket and plays a critical role in terms of employment generation. Over the past year the industry bounced back and performed well due to multiple positive steps taken by the government including reducing the import duty on gold and silver as well as ensuring there were no drastic increases in personal taxes. Beginning 2021, we also noticed that consumers moved towards purchases that were meaningful and brought value to their lives where jewellery played an important role. We look forward to the forthcoming budget in view that the gems and jewellery sector plays a pivotal role in the growth of the economy.
Nikhil Mathur, Managing Director – India, GfK
“In the coming Union Budget session, the industry is expecting an increased focus on energy-efficient products with reduced GST tax slabs and added incentives. Some reforms that is likely to boost manufacturing include reduction of corporate tax, expansion on Production Linked Incentives, rationalization of tax rates on products like Air conditioners, televisions, etc., The government’s commitment to make India a global manufacturing hub and ‘AtmaNirbhar’ with ‘Make in India’ vision will potentially help in increasing penetration and expansion of tech & durables market.”
Reetesh Dhingra, Co-Founder, WiZ Care
“With the global pandemic and huge hit to worldwide supply chains Western economies look to substitute manufacturing from China by creating new sources for the same, manufacturing in India is on the cusp of exponential growth by fulfilling this demand, the demand is in all sectors and products. The Union government can enable the same by providing subsidies, Incentives and Finance to both new manufacturing projects and also increase in capacities of exiting plants, this needs to be central and uniform across the country and not dependent on State governments, Manufacturing needs to be focused area for next 5 years”.
Vibhor Sahare, CEO & Co-Founder, ANS Commerce
Startups and MSMEs are looking for measures to improve the credit lending and accessibility of funds that can mobilise growth. We expect that the Union Budget will focus on simplifying taxation, investment, and offering further incentives to Indian startups, that can help in generating more revenue and employment.
Further, measures such as streamlining approvals, compliance for ease of doing business, quicker adoption of technology, and automation by traditional retailers would be immensely helpful to the e-commerce industry. More entrepreneurship and incubation programs should also be a priority.
Srinivas Ganadinni, Founder and CEO, The Tea Planet
The tea industry is looking forward to the proposed Tea Promotion and Development Act of 2022 in the coming year as the Tea Act, 1953 has lost relevance in today’s context. The Budget should introduce new objectives so that the tea board can act as a facilitator for optimizing the development, promotion, and research in the tea industry.
Indian tea has a large demand in export markets, but we are still ranked fourth in the industry. Hopefully, this budget will make it easier to promote Indian teas on the global market through international trade shows by providing trade fair subsidiary schemes to large, medium, and small scale industries that are currently exporting. This will invariably help build a resilient ecosystem for these sectors that will bolster our overall growth. Additionally, industries that are into the second line of packaging and contributing to value addition to the tea industry should be encouraged and subsidies should be given to enable infrastructure upgrades that will encourage exports to world markets.
For F&B and restaurant business, GST input should be revived which will help the industry to move at a faster pace. Also, Govt should think of some insurance mechanisms or Business interruption insurance policies as we have in other countries. The reason being the risk of business today is completely different compared to a decade ago due to increased disruption in the industry affected by factors like pandemic and cyber thefts.
Neeraj Gupta, Founder, and CEO, Genes2Me Pvt Ltd
Health was one of the major focuses of the Government last year, and we are routing for the same in Budget 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic’s teachings highlight the urgent need to capitalize on health, which is no longer an option, but a necessity. The healthcare sector is anticipating a good Union Budget, and hoping that the Covid -19 scenario will be turned into an opportunity to prioritize and implement structural changes that would benefit the general public. The Government should propose interest subsidies, lower GST on clinical trials and research activities, to boost innovation and R&D. Over the next few years, the government should increase public healthcare spending from 1.8 percent of GDP to at least 6 Percentage. The priority should be on the expansion of physical, remote access healthcare facilities as well as digital health and telemedicine. Also, the Covid testing and vaccine budget should be increased.
Shailesh Guntu, CEO – Milann Fertility & Birthing Hospitals
Allocating a sufficient budget for the healthcare sector is extremely important as it has a significant impact on the overall economy. With increasing lifestyle problems and diseases, it is predicted to have a huge impact on lifestyle-refining health care expenses in the coming years. Dropping fertility rates in both sexes is one of the alarming concerns, and therefore, the government should spend more on customised medicines as they show potential for progress. It is crucial to allocate funds for genetic research and the development of resources to conduct refined studies around genetics, as customised medicines can only be prescribed after genetic profiling. Due to unhealthy lifestyle patterns, childbirth would require expert care and infrastructure support in the future. The government should consider developing a long-term approach for implementing a system to deal with future pandemic situations, and it would require adequate funding for this sector to have healthy adults in the country.
Kamal Manocha, Founder & CEO of PMS AIF World
“Govt Revenues today are far ahead of expenditures, so, budget will focus on boosting next level of growth towards Indian economy attaining $ 5 Trillion GDP aims, by focusing on Capex revival(infra, railways & others), and real estate sector. But, from equity market perspective, budget is not expected to bring in much volatility, and would be more or less a non-event, as markets are more looking to react to Fed actions and Inflation.”
Shalin Maheshwari, Co-founder, Merqui
“In the upcoming budget under the new labor law, we are expecting the gig workers and platform workers to be eligible for social security benefits such as income protection, health insurance and better accessibility of ESI & pension funds. Leveraging large employment providers and intermediaries to drive government schemes and programs for better end reach. Incentivize apprenticeship opportunities for freshers straight out of education and provide easier operations among industrial partners which will encourage them to regularly deploy more apprentices and increase the skilled workforce of our country.”
Akash Sinha, Co-Founder & CEO, Cashfree Payments
The upcoming Union Budget holds high significance, as the Indian economy takes strides towards its complete recovery and growth post the pandemic. This imperative will be greatly supported by enhanced financial inclusion and digitalization which makes it crucial that appropriate measures are announced in this regard. It is heartening to see the Government’s recognition of fintechs’ ability to reach out to the unserved and underserved sections of the country, as evident from multiple initiatives in recent times. To further scale financial inclusion, it is essential that the government’s support is directed towards boosting digital infrastructure and innovation. Additionally, policy and regulatory efforts should be aimed at creating a favorable investment environment. While ensuring an appropriate degree of regulation, easing the investments in unlisted private businesses, especially in non-metro cities is crucial for convenient capital flow to technology start-ups towards their healthy growth. In the same respect, reducing the entry limits for Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) and syndicates, aligning with the Government’s allocation to priority sectors, will ensure fund infusion to businesses.
Rajiv K Vij, Founder, Plug Mobility
We expect the budget to be Growth oriented and to give relief to Commercial Car industry and other sectors which have been badly impacted due to the pandemic and lockdowns.
The Fleet owners/commercial car industry has suffered hugely during the pandemic and while it makes sense to induct Electric cars, the fleet owners are financially stressed and financial sector is maintaining a negative view about the sector to fund Electric cars for commercial fleet segment.
Government must declare EV’s for commercial car industry as a priority sector, implement First Loss Guarantee Scheme for the sector and ensure that the public sector banks and financial institutions offer easy finance with minimal margin money requirement at low interest rates for EV fleets.
Naman Jain, Education Expert and Director, Silverline Prestige School, Ghaziabad.
Education is a subject of the concurrent list (Central and State Governments both spend on education). In last year’s budget, INR 93224 crores was allocated for education. Where school education was allocated 59% of this spent – INR 54874 crores and 41% for higher education – INR 38351 crores. While there was an annualized increment in the allocation of more than 2%, the accumulated allocation amounted to less than 3% of the total budget. This needs to be analysed with the fact that The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) emphasizes the need for at least 6% of the total budget to be allocated to education with financial support for critical components of education such as provision of adequate teachers, teacher training, etc. Without which the indented effectiveness is impossible to achieve. While increased allocation of budget for education is advocated and required, it is equally critical to concentrate on increasing the effectiveness of the resources. Underutilization of resources needs to be curbed through policy implementation.
There have been some welcomed steps taken by the government in the field of higher education, especially setting up more world-class institutes. But our country requires more focus and work on school education that builds the foundation. Public private partnership towards strengthening school education through teacher training and capacity building for education delivery can transform the system bringing it more in line for future requirements.
The pandemic has unveiled the huge potential, advantages and capability of EdTech intervention in delivering and execution of education through appropriate methodologies. The future needs hybrid, online, blended, flipped, discovery, experiential and various other learning methods. The upcoming budget should also support and encourage development of new education technologies and innovations.
Startup Sector
Vicky Jain, Founder, uknowva :
The pandemic has disrupted every sector and one thing that everyone wants from the UnionBudget 2022-23 is to bring the economy back on track. While every sector has faced its own ups and downs over the past year, there is one sector that has witnessed immense growth and potential i.e. technology and automation. The technology and automation sector has become a significant contributor to the country’s mission of digital empowerment. Given the role of the technology sector in the growth of Digital India, it is expected that the government may implement effective and favorable policies, in creating the digital infrastructure and the ecosystem to support innovation.
Similarly, incentivizing research and development of next-generation technologies like AI, ML, robotics, etc. could help leverage India’s cost-effective science and engineering talent to develop strategic capabilities in scientific and industrial research. Special provisions and schemes need to be introduced to increase Digital Education and relevant Digitization to foster employment generation as well as re-employment. Another important area to focus on is the upskilling and reskilling of the existing workforce. There has been a lot of change in the way we operate and do business post COVID. It’s quite clear that the skill gap from education to corporate remains quite huge. This gap is now increasing with the AI-driven work culture setting in. Youth unemployment is close to 20 percent and that’s quite alarming. Adequate allocation for upskilling and reskilling is the need of the hour.
Layak Singh, Founder & CEO- Artivatic.AI
“India houses the third-largest cluster of startups in the world, which means nurturing them back to their feet can ensure an untold boost to employment rates, drawing maximum FDI channels to the country again and result in a quicker, more sustained recovery of the markets to their heydays.
Since 2020, an atmosphere of uncertainties and challenges has plagued startups. And while startups have stepped up their game even during the pandemic, they could do with a helping hand from the budget. Less cumbersome, liberal IPO policy guidelines, a revised compliance policy that’s easy especially for taxation purposes, and relaxation of tax obligations will lift a huge burden off our shoulders. Extending necessary exemptions to all companies that qualify as ‘startups’ such as the easing of angel tax and gift tax regulations will further incentivize Indian and overseas investors to engage with our sector—a heaven-sent opportunity for the industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic has ensured that the health technology sector buckles up quickly to respond to this prolonged environment of heightened crisis. Digitization has aided the transformation to on-ground awareness and actual, calibrated penetration of information and treatment. But there’s always scope for improvement. Expenditure on genetic research in India is in no way comparable to even the world average. Experts are advising rich fund allocation for genome mapping programs in order to hasten the development of monitoring resources to calibrate the genome-related health status of the Indian population. Such projects are humungous in nature and are only successfully possible in a close public-private partnership. The “Make-in-India” initiative is another tough, timely call-to-action for the tech sector in general. This planned push for tech adoption is important to make the economy self-reliant again. Hence, health tech-centric startups will need the aid of policy and tax sops such as moderated GST rates. These will encourage them to continue building these scalable, digital infrastructures that can help in these challenging times, plus they streamline offline offerings and save costs and time.”
Health & Wellness sector:
Vijender Reddy Muthyala, Co-Founder and CEO DrinkPrime :
The Government through programs such as Jal Jeevan Mission-Har Ghar Jal has been focusing on the laudable initiative of giving people access to potable water. While we have made great strides in building out access especially in rural areas, accessibility to drinking water remains a challenge. The government needs to provide incentives to inspire startups to tackle this issue. Only through a cohesive public and private partnership will we be able to solve this basic human right. One area the Government should investigate is the GST and other taxes levied on providers of drinking water. Water is an essential basic human necessity and should be taxed accordingly. DrinkPrime would like to work with the government to make drinking water more accessible and affordable to all Indians.
Darpan Saini, CEO, Phyt.health :
Medical expenses have increased over the past two years with Covid taking center stage. Many have lost jobs or have taken pay cuts, resulting in financial stress on families. To ease these problems, the government needs to make digital healthcare affordable.
A special focus on making health insurance affordable by reducing GST on premiums from 18% to 5% is a viable option. The government should make health insurance applicable for telehealth services such as doctor consultations or online physiotherapy to help patients recover from the comfort of their home. This is crucial for patients who can’t visit a doctor due to Covid restrictions. Moreover, the FM could also look to increase the limit of deduction under Section 80D from Rs. 50k to 1 Lakh – This could help the common man combat the rising healthcare costs.
Jindal Naturecure Institute :
KR Raghunath, Senior Chairman, Jindal Naturecure Institute
“The need of the hour to spend more on creating awareness about why preventive healthcare is important, more so with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Food as a medicine should be promoted as much as possible. The benefits of making positive changes in the diet should be advertised. This can not be achieved without a nationwide programme of educating the masses. During the pandemic, PM Modi has given the much-needed push to the AYUSH sector as he encouraged the world-class R&D enablement and manufacturing capabilities of India. We are looking forward to more promising announcements from Budget 2022. Even though COVID is a communicable disease, its worst effects are visible in those with non-communicable diseases– cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, hypertension, obesity and chronic respiratory diseases. Therefore, an allocation only for strengthening communicable disease surveillance is a sub-optimal solution. The budget for up-skilling of the youth to become Preventive Health Coaches is also required since this will address the problem of unemployment and build on PM Modi’s Atmanirbhar mission. We need to look at coming out of this pandemic as a healthier and fitter country. Apart from yoga, the government should promote naturopathy and make it a part of school and college curriculums, and set up a committee to introduce naturopathy practices in universities. Standardizing naturopathy practice is critical as it will enable us to lay down strict standards that have to be adhered to by all Naturopaths. Legitimizing naturopathy and conducting mass awareness campaigns to educate the masses is the right way forward.”
Education Sector :
Dr. Pankaj Sharma, Director, JK Lakshmipat University
Quality education is one of the fundamental rights of every child. When there is a pandemic in the environment, quality education has become a distant dream due to the widening gap in accessing education. As a result, in this budget, the Government should announce multiple schemes to enhance better Internet connectivity infrastructure across the nation so that last-mile connectivity can be ensured and access to affordable 5G devices. The education curriculum in the higher education institutes should be job-ready so that drop-out rates can be curtailed. If we see the education expenditure, India spends only 4.6 percent of its total GDP and ranks 62nd in total public expenditure on education per student, therefore it’s high time that the government should allocate at least 6 percent of Indian GDP to the education sector.
Ashwini Jain, CEO & Co-founder, ForeignAdmits
With the idea of creating a huge impact of “Make in India”, it is important to understand the role of start-ups too. The start-ups and their new ideas to contribute to the economy and localization need proper funding and budget too. Many of the economy-related issues would be solved with better start-up conditions in the country. Not only would we be able to boost localization at its best, we would also be able to create jobs, more career opportunities, and customize the production according to the needs of our citizens. There are some important factors that the government needs to keep in mind during the upcoming fiscal year budget discussion. Some of them are reducing the GST, giving more funding to the start-ups, and making the public data accessible for us. Start-ups should also get equity and interest-free loans in the growth stage so that they can help in contributing to the country’s economy.
FinTech sector:
Mandar Marathe, CEO, Koppr:
For the common man of India, medical expenses have increased over the past two years. Many have lost jobs or have taken pay cuts, resulting in additional financial stress. To alleviate these concerns, the government needs to make healthcare affordable & accessible. A special focus on making health insurance affordable by reducing GST on premiums from 18% to 5% is a viable option. The government could also look to increase the limit of deduction under Section 80D from Rs. 50k to 1 Lakh.
A significant allocation of the budget should be made towards bolstering the healthcare infrastructure of the nation. From the current 1.8% of GDP spent, the FM minister should further raise it to 3%. Apart from healthcare, the Modi government could do wonders to bring in more domestic equity investments by reducing the rate of capital gains tax from 10% to 5% or doing away with LTCG tax altogether.
Dr. Anish Desai MD., Founder & CEO, IntelliMed Healthcare Solutions-
“Health care sector continues to face the new challenges presented by the ongoing pandemic, which continues to dominate the attention and resources from all stakeholders. Neglect of Rural Population, Inadequate Outlay for Health, Social Inequality, Shortage of Medical Personnel, Lack of Medical Research, Expensive Health Service, Health Insurance sector reforms., Lack of cheap finance for the healthcare delivery models are some of the major issues that have been ailing the Indian healthcare system.
To address some of the gaps, a 137% increase in healthcare expenditure was announced in Budget 2021. India spent around 1.8% of its GDP on healthcare. Increasing the healthcare expenditure above 2.5% of GDP and further going up to 4%, is one of the primary expectations from the Union Budget 2022. Widening the coverage and regulating the private insurance sector will be important to address few of the issues. Making finance available at low interest rates for hospitals and diagnostic chains & making it one of the priority infrastructure in the sector is critical. GST and import duties need to be minimal on life saving drugs and devices.
Investments in R&D & medical research need to be encouraged and positive steps are needed in this direction, with financial allocation for the same. This will help to boost the domestic healthcare sector. International companies need to be encouraged to have R&D and manufacturing in India in collaboration with domestic players to enhance the capabilities of the local players and make state of art technology available to Indian patients.”
Sumesh Nair, CEO & Co-founder, Board Infinity-
“Apprentice levy: Our expectation from the budget is 2 fold – one is an apprentice levy on all organisations paying wage bills more than 15 crores. This levy should be charged at 0.5% – 1% of the wage bill. This levy can be used to build apprentice training programs which can help a massive number of students getting out of higher education to access these programs and get skilled. Employers will benefit from a great talent pipeline in this process. This model is very successful in the UK for many sectors.
The second expectation is a reduction in GST. Currently, 18% GST on educational services is a burden on the consumers especially for technical and supplementary education. If we can build more affordability for customers it would be great. More than 50% of the total addressable market can’t pay more than Rs 35,000 for a skilling course. This plus GST of 18% discourages many consumers to opt for learning and relearning. I would urge the government to reduce the GST from 18% to 5% on all educational services. This would encourage skill learning and create more skilled professionals which is the need of the hour
Better financing models: The government should move towards having better financing models and direct the banks to introduce new products apart from traditional educational loans. I would expect that a national institution or consortium should take this ahead as financing is a core need to increase skilling training adoption. This will generate more skilled professionals leading to a better economy. Although NBFCs and new age institutions are trying to innovate and introduce new products, the coverage is still not optimal.
Real Time SME Job Portal: We would also want a SME job portal being run in a Public Private partnership model. This portal should give real time visibility into jobs available with SMEs and skills required for the same. It is similar to airline inventory available in global distribution systems and there is full knowledge on inventory. In this case inventory means jobs available across SMEs. We need a central system to understand the real time job availability across SMEs.
Remove university degree requirement for Jobs: We would need basic entry level jobs at Rs 3 lacs to Rs 5 lacs without a university degree as it is an unnecessary burden on many people to complete higher education to get into jobs. The NEP spoke about multiple entries and exits, but this can be done if at a central government level a rule or legislation can be bought out and in fact incentivize employers to hire skilled youngsters who needn’t go through a higher education system to find entry level jobs in digital, finance, management skills domain.”
Ankit Arora, Founding Director, Saarthi Education-
“As we enter the third year of the pandemic, we have learned a great deal about the COVID19 disease and the virus. However, one thing that we still haven’t learned is that indefinite school closures, especially without any plans of an alternate form of education for vulnerable children, is not an option. Indian schools for primary children have been closed for more than 600 days! There are multiple reports which peg this to be around 3-4 years worth of learning loss for children. Some studies, like the one by the Asian Development Bank, have also shown how this is going to affect the future incomes of our children.
While mindlessly opening up schools might not be the best idea, there are several steps the government must take. These include opening schools in batches while following COVID appropriate behaviour, setting up protocols for children in normal times and times when the wave is climbing, creating a community-focused approach by appointing community volunteers who can ensure learning continues while schools are shut or run at limited capacity. All of this will require budget and resources – resources to be mobilised at the community level, training teachers to follow COVID appropriate behaviour, equipping schools to follow safety protocols and making children and parents feel safe. The government has a golden chance to increase the Education budget and set aside a hefty chunk to focus on school re-openings. A part of this extra budget should also be used to run remediation programmes for children who have lost their learning levels and need to come up to speed with their grade levels. This means engaging on-profit organisations in providing offline and digital resources to both, the teachers and children.
The waves will come and go before COVID can turn into an endemic. This does not mean that we should wait around and let our children suffer. Inaction today is going to result in massive inequalities tomorrow. Let us start by giving school education the priority (in terms of budget and resources) it deserves, especially at a crucial time like this.”
Kunal Kislay, Integration Wizards Solutions-
“Indian startups are the torchbearers for innovation in the country. With the introduction of new schemes and policies as well as changes in the tax structure, 2021 witnessed the proliferation of Tech startups. Indian startups also raised larger financing rounds compared to previous years. The pace of growth signals the immense potential of the domestic market.
The upcoming budget must equate with the momentum at which these startups are progressing. We expect further developments to Make in India and Digital India initiatives in order to establish India as a deep-tech hub. As digital adoption and transformation accelerate, Budget 2022 needs to focus on building a strong IT and internet infrastructure as well.
On the other hand, the MSMEs sector has been one of the most vulnerable sectors during the pandemic. The focal point while preparing Budget 2022 should be devising a robust growth map to revive the economy thumped by COVID-19. MSMEs are a key contributor to the country’s GDP and employment. We expect Budget 2022 to provide reforms on reduction in GST and the eagerly-awaited tax relief for small businesses.
With the right policy push and resources, the budget can be a real game-changer for the Indian technology and small business sectors. The government should also take steps to reduce the compliance burden in all aspects – taxes, loans, or audits for both sectors.”
Kazim Rizvi, Founding Director, The Dialogue-
“The upcoming budget is going to be critical from the startups viewpoint. The third wave of pandemic might disrupt the business activities again, especially the manufacturing division, therefore, there would be a heavy reliance on the budget to give these startups much needed relief. The startups would be looking for ease and simplification in sector specific regulations and compliances to give them certainty and cost saving opportunities. Further, these startups would also be hoping for much needed impetus in form of tax exemptions and incentives along with resolution of issues relating to GST credits. Budget should give importance to the healthcare startups and may provide certain relief in the form of reduction of GST and investing in the R&D for this already stressed sector. Similarly, clearing the uncertainty in the pending crypto regulation would also support the startups operating in this sphere.
Startups are the enabler of opportunities and transform a job seeker into a job provider. These startups are going to play a crucial role in India’s digital growth while creating employment opportunities and the government must support the ecosystem and help them achieve success. The evolving business models must be taken into account while crafting policy decisions. For these startups, funding is one of the major issues. Simplifying funding routes and creating a business-friendly environment would help them attract foreign investors and increase India’s ease of doing business and help them compete with global players. Government may also focus on bringing the startups into the global supply chain network and further invest in enhancing the domestic research and innovation capabilities.”
Mayank Tiwari, Founder and CEO, Reshamandi-
“2022 marks potential for commendable growth and bigger-than-ever expansion with the right boost from the upcoming budget. On foresight, some remarkable reforms have to be made in enabling the three significant stakeholders that benefit from the three evolutionary stages of any product; suppliers of raw materials, manufacturers and the product sellers.
When it comes to the textiles and apparel industry, they are the farmers, reelers and weavers, and the retailers. India should recognise its farmers of natural fibres as an integral part of the agricultural sector. The government can invest in scientific methods of preventing crop failure at the early disease level which will ultimately increase the overall yield. This could turn the country into a significant game-changer in the world’s textile and apparel industry.
The proposal for a GST hike for the textile industry has been deferred, which I believe is welcome news. Thousands of small businesses can be adversely affected if the hike is not devised, taking into account all the stakeholders.
Small scale manufacturers must be acknowledged as engineers of their own merit. Government can extend credit facilities for them and provide means for new-age technology adoption. In the textiles and apparel sector, the reeling units and the small-scale weavers would hugely benefit from such progressive measures. Besides, enough allocations for R&D would also make way for greater production quality.
At the seller level, tax burdens and rigid regulatory compliances should be remodelled, which can provide scope for growth and expansion. This will increase ease of doing business, and can largely contribute to the GDP.
All in all, the future holds great promise for all of us; and I’m excited to see how the Finance Ministry enables these stakeholders from the textiles and apparel sector.”
Niraali Parekh, Founder and Creative Director, Bokaap Design
The tech and design sector is eager to know what the upcoming budget holds. I hope the government can ease access to resources, funds, and capital to startups and SMEs entrepreneurs in this space. For example, although COVID has boosted work in the tech space, businesses have curtailed their expenses in design services potentially compromising on quality. With a boost in the digital economy, UX/UI Design is more relevant than ever before. Experienced UX/UI talent in India is opting for remote jobs with American companies with higher-paying capacity or heavily funded startups. The incentives will bridge the gap between expectations and investment in branding and UX/UI services for small and medium-sized businesses. Eventually boosting studios to hire and retain the right talent and improve effectiveness without creating burnout.”
Nitin Misra, Co-founder, indiagold
“With the government making progress on several fronts, we anticipate a policy framework in the budget that allows FinTechs to work closely with relevant government institutions to improve the distribution and adoption of existing gold monetization schemes, as well as launch new products like the gold savings account. All compliances, including incorporation, GST, other taxes, EPFO, and other registrations, should be handled through a single window in India.
To stimulate entrepreneurship in India, the government should also allow entrepreneurs to carry forward their loss of income to offset against future income. Furthermore, reduced capital gains on mergers and acquisitions will help the sector grow.”
Ujjwal Singh, CEO and President, Infinity Learn
To address the rising demand for digital learning, the EdTech industry has embraced new technology and resources. EdTech companies in India are creating effective solutions and serving as vehicles for socioeconomic development and transformation through innovation and scalable technology. The use of technology in education, or digitalization, has aided the spread of quality education throughout the country, particularly in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. EdTech companies have helped to democratize access to high-quality education and improve student engagement by using technology technologies. For its expansion, the industry is looking for government help. Ramping up of digital infrastructure is the top demand of the edtech sector. Because of infrastructure issues, cities in Tier 3 and Tier 4 struggled with online education.
We also expect the government to recognize Edtech as an industry group, allowing it to engage in decentralizing learning at all levels and reconsidering the taxation of ESOPs. For a fair and equal system for offline and online education providers, the government should cut GST on online learning and materials. Infinity Learn by Sri Chaitanya believes in harnessing educational technologies to meet the country’s ever-increasing demand for both online and offline, as well as collaborating with the government to reduce learning loss and develop a New India.
Nayan Gala, Founder, JPIN
“The union budget will create a great benefit for the startup ecosystem as the government will focus on investment driven growth that will push companies of all sizes both in the public as well as private sector. It would also raise additional resources through strategic investments, divestments and asset monetisation.
The government should help in assisting startups through policies and support mechanisms towards domestic capital participation. Along with providing incentives to setup incubators, tax exemptions in FDIs and relaxing taxes for startups.
Prime Minister, Narendra Modi announcing National Startups Day this year, brings in an added advantage and benefit for the ecosystem and shows the rise and importance of startups in the country”
Prahlad Krishnamurti, Chief Business Officer, Cleartrip
We received this approved quote for another opportunity we will be using the same for all other media queries. sharing same with business today-
In terms of the Union Budget 2022, we have clear-cut, substantial expectations from the government as one of the worst-hit sectors by COVID-19. Given that the sector has taken a heavy blow, some relief measures like travel and tourism to be treated at par with the IT sectors would help quickly revive business and propel the industry towards growth and progress. Though Budget 2021 brought enhancements for public transport infrastructure, we are particularly looking for a proposal that talks specifically about the Indian travel and tourism industry’s short-term and long-term revival.
Alok Kumar, Founder & CEO at StockDaddy
Out of 3.1K Indian start-ups funded between 2014 and June 2020, 385 start-ups have shut down operations and it caused a loss of $760 Mn. Further, funds dried up and close to 40% of start-ups halted operations in May 2020, according to a NASSCOM report. Start-ups went through unprecedented challenges during the pandemic. Now, as the finance minister is going to present the Union Budget 2022-23 on February 1st, this sector is looking forward to the government’s decision to elevate the start-up ecosystem, including MSMEs.
Their first demand will be the volume-based GST exemption for a span of 2-3 years. They also expect a broadening of the ambit for tax exemptions, suggesting that the government pass on this benefit to all the registered start-ups under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). Loan and finance procedures must be eased for start-ups that simply mean — no collateral business loans along with zero service fees to make the finance part hassle-free for the new entrants. Moreover, profit-making start-ups should not be excluded from these benefits and relaxation.
Annual targets of distribution of monetary funds should be used to allocate finances to new ventures and the process for that should be easy-going. Hence, designated banks should be constituted for ease of finance. Besides, as MSMEs are the backbone of India’s manufacturing sector, loans should be available to them at a very nominal rate of interest.
Nishant Arora, Co-Founder, Sixth Element Finserv’s Set Up Services
We expect relaxed tax structures and capital gains framework so that foreign institutional investors and investment funds can directly introduce their capital & provide funding to Indian registered entities and not divert their funds to the holding concerns of such startups, registered in countries like Singapore, that have been specifically registered to divert the governance & management control to foreign land to reduce the tax and compliance burden.
We recommend that Government should strengthen their startup promotion and facilitation schemes in Tier 2 & 3, which will also help in development of various zones like the silicon valley in India. We also recommend establishment of “Startup parks and zones” where in the cost of basic infrastructure is subsidized, and Center & State government organise “Startup fairs” and invite MNCs from all over the world to have a look at the Indian grown startups.
India faces issues relating to availability of workforce who have the due skill sets that are required in the Startup ecosystem such as Digital marketing, Website development, Blockchain development, Machine Learning optimization, UI/UX Design and development, and Artificial Intelligence development. If the Government facilitates growth of such skill universities, then not only will we solve a problem that relates to unemployment, but we will also see more startups from all over the world coming in India to setup their entities.
Vimal Alawadhi, MD, Best Agrolife Ltd.
The Indian Agrochemical industry requires attractive PLI scheme, along with ease of transporting with lesser intermediates within the country. These implementations can prove vital in the coming year for the industry. We also hope the government comes up with reforms to rationalize GST on agrochemicals (reduce GST 18% to 6%) to meet the objective of “Doubling Farmer’s Income”. We would also like to propose Import duties on finished products to be increased to make local producers more competitive. The need of the hour is to make Indian products globally competitive and offer attractive incentives to export oriented domestic manufacturers for bringing a boom in the Indian agriculture market. Government must provide financial and technical support to Indian manufacturers for backward integration, especially for import substituted intermediates that will help the industry to become a more tenacious competitor to China.
Divya Jain, Director & Founder, TCO1
In the present times of pandemic, online education has proven to be a boon for the parents and students. The scope and reach of online learning tools has made sure students don’t lag behind in their studies and continue their academic journey without any challenges. Edtech platforms have been the safest contributor. We expect that in the upcoming budget, central government will closely look into introducing some prominent reforms for it. One of the key expectations from edtech industry is to reduce the GST slab of 18% to 5% for financial assistance and support. This will make the industry an attractive proposition for driving investments. The NEP 2020 was a visionary step for the industry, we expect moves on such lines that can bring about pivotal change in the remote learning sector
Aditya Chamaria, MD, Damodar Ropeways & Infra Limited
We expect the Government to introduce measures in this Union budget 2022-23 which will help to improve the potential of ropeways, boost tourism and enhance urban transport connectivity. GST on ropeways currently is at 18%, which is higher than that on air travel at 5% (economy) 12% (Business class), Railways (5%), Highway Tolls (0%). In fact, ropeways should be treated at least at par with Railways where the GST is 5% with input tax credit, because, they cater to all sections of society. Even this tax reduction will go a long way in boosting the industry and making it more viable to operate Ropeways without having to raise ticket prices to offset the increases in all other input costs. The ropeway projects are mostly situated in hilly areas, and the cross section of consumer availing the services comes from the average earning socio-economic class of people and a large % are villagers going on a pilgrimage. For ease of doing business and fast-tracking new / proposed projects, especially for tourism or Urban transport systems, support from government is needed. in streamlining the process of licensing, permits in construction of ropeway and cable car projects and even those under O&M. The Subsidies like those proposed for Varanasi project of 30 – 40% is a step in the right direction, and is needed to bolster this necessary industry. We are witnessing that larger number of tenders are being floated, but government is still focused on promoting CEN standards (European) for validating a ropeway project. Indian BIS standards have been upgraded recently and are very much at par with the CEN standards. Our recommendation to the authorities is to bring some kind of hybrid model for certification. Benefits of this hybrid model will go long way, as it will significantly reduce the cost of the overall projects by atleast 15% to 39% without any compromise on the standards of safety or quality. This will ultimately translate into faster RoI, more companies participating in the tenders and ultimately the pricing of tickets born by the customers.
Dhruv Agarwala, Group CEO, Housing.com, Makaan.com and Proptiger.com
“Housing demand did bounce back strongly after the first as well as the second wave of the COVID pandemic, driven mainly by historical low interest rates on home loans. However, the sector is still plagued with two perennial problems — unsold inventories and stalled projects. The third wave — in the form of the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus — has emerged as a challenge for the sector and the economy. To deal with the legacy issues and also this new challenge, the real estate sector needs support in the upcoming Budget. The corpus of the government-backed stress fund SWAMIH should be hiked to at least Rs 1 lakh crore. The current corpus of Rs 25,000 crore has already been committed. This will help in completion of stuck projects and bring back the much-needed consumers’ trust in the under construction property market. The government should give more tax incentives for both principal and interest paid on home loans. The Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) should be extended for EWS-LIG and reintroduced for the MIG segment. The government has taken some bold measures to promote rental housing — framing of model tenancy law and launch of Affordable Rental Housing Complexes. Tax sops should be provided to boost both supply and demand of rental housing. Rental yields are lower in residential properties compared with office assets. This can be compensated through tax incentives to developers and property buyers.
Pradeep Aggarwal, Co-Founder & Chairman, Signature Global and Chairman – ASSOCHAM National Council on Real Estate, Housing and Urban Development
In the Union Budget 2021-22, we expect the Government to double the amount of fund allocation for Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana to enable more people to realize the dream of owning a home and help the Government achieve the goal of Housing for All by 2022. Finance Minister will have to pay attention to the Input Tax Credit, reduce the GST to single-digit on building material, and continue tax holiday for affordable housing developer.
Manoj Gaur, CMD, Gaurs Group and Vice-President, North, CREDAI National
We look forward to a people and a business friendly budget. We request for the re-introduction of input tax credit in GST; with the input tax credit benefit, property prices will remain under control. Also, bringing stamp duty and registration charges in the ambit of GST will be highly appreciated if the Budget addresses it. We expect this year’s Budget to increase the income tax exemption limit of the Income Tax Act, 1961, encouraging people to buy their dream homes.
The need is to encourage people to buy homes, and one of the steps would be that the first-time homebuyer should get interest on home loan deducted from income or at least the Interest subsidy should be increased to Rs 5 lakh from the current Rs 2 lakh. Also, PMAY and CLSS schemes should continue for another three years, with the past two years severely hampered by covid: Pmay scheme extension is definitely required.
The real estate sector needs more attention from the government as industry performance is directly proportional to housing. The long pending demand of granting industry status to real estate is need of the hour. The boost to this sector would generate more employment too. To strengthen the real estate sector, banks should extend loans to developers at the same rate of interest and same terms and conditions as that to the industries. The government should also look at the overall GST percentage, which is up to 28% in the real estate sector, and bring it equal to that of the industry.
Amarjit Bakshi, CMD, Central Park
As the government is making all efforts to minimise the pandemic’s impact on economy and give it a boost, there is a need to spur consumer demand and give the realty sector a big shot in the arm. The sector needs focused measures to further bolster demand in 2022. The demands go beyond getting infrastructure status; credit availability for the under-construction projects, more focus on SWAMIH, and more exemptions to buyers. We hope that Central and State Governments will work on reducing GST, circle rates, and stamp duty.
Ankit Kansal, Founder & MD, 360 Realtors
After a prolonged period of demand downcycle, and COVID-triggered lockdown, Indian real estate stands at the cusp of quick recovery. Despite fears of Omicron looming large, the industry is well-placed to cope with the crisis. Meanwhile, it is also imperative for the government to help the supply side through deeper and wider policy reforms such as interest subsidies to developers, faster mechanisms to obtain clearance and reduced GST rates. Likewise, the budget should also take prudent steps to boost demand in the form of increased tax subsidies, lowering of stamp duty, etc. This will be pivotal since Indian real estate is a mission-critical sector in terms of the government’s long-term agenda to achieve a USD 5 trillion economy.
Rajat Goel, JMD MRG World
Affordable Housing sector has been given the infrastructure status, but the implementation has not been up to the mark. We hope that the Budget will address the issue of making cheaper land available in main cities to develop affordable housing. Apart from that, income tax benefits must also increase, which will help in more investment in real estate. Apart from this, the Government should reduce the GST to a single digit on building materials like steel, cement etc and contractor service, among others.
Harpal Singh Chawla, Director, Spaze Group
The Budget should focus on the commercial segment, which has the potential to attract foreign investment and FDI. The granting of infrastructure status to the entire real estate sector is at the forefront as it will help attract more investment. The finance minister has to balance fiscal prudence and the urgent needs of the sector. Also, this Budget must also aim to increase the present savings limit so that the young population gets a higher spending power and look at the real estate sector as an investment avenue.
Amit Modi, Director, ABA Corp & President (Elect), CREDAI Western UP
We are undergoing the third wave of a global pandemic, and real estate sector being one of the largest employing sectors of the nation has so much to fulfill and achieve. Availability of affordable home loans and the importance of owning a home are two major driving factors for revival. However, there still remains certain aspect which needs government’s attention especially as the Union Budget 2022-23 draws near. One of the most long-standing demand being ‘Industry Status to Real Estate Sector’, not having an ‘industry status’ becomes difficult for real estate sector to avail legitimate finances from banks and other financial institutions. It will help in getting low cost loans from the system, and then the cost benefit with regard to high interest loans from outside the system can be further moved on to the end-users. We also expect that the input credit regime should be brought back into the GST regime as far as the Residential real estate is concerned. With all the benefits being passed on to the homebuyers, if it gets implemented the benefits achieved will make the entire homebuying process affordable. It will also shield both buyers and developers from the cost implications of fluctuating cost of raw materials. Developing a home is a huge responsibility, and it takes in a lot of efforts from developers, authorities must address the long-standing demands from the developer community which include Single Window Clearance to facilitate faster deliveries and project completions, exemption limit on Interest on Home loan, for supporting millions of first time buyers across the nation, and Principal Deduction Rules Under Section 80 C to be implemented. This will make sure that the deduction of principal amount of housing loan repaid would not be clubbed with other deductions under Section 80C. Alternatively, the limit under Section 80C should be increased to Rs 3 lakhs.
Deepak Kapoor, Director, Gulshan Group
The market sentiment in real estate is much more positive this year when compared to the two pandemic years gone by. Owning a home is the best possible asset in present times due to the long term capital appreciation. Amid the third wave, it is the perfect time to provide industry status to the real estate sector.
This will give developers ease of availing cheaper credit facilities from financial institutions and banks. Terminating stamp duty and registration charges in the gamut of GST would be highly acknowledged. The sector is counting on government; we hope that the Budget will help people to have more buying power by increasing their disposable incomes. Due to WFH, the commercial segment has suffered the brunt so it is eagerly waiting for sops that could help in overcoming the after effects of multiple lockdowns and curfews.
Navdeep Sardana, CMD Whiteland Corporation
Our expectations from the Union Budget 2022-23 will be related to real estate sector being awarded the infrastructure status. The status will help the sector achieve multiple tax benefits to boost foreign and local investment. The investments from international institutional funds will be exempted from taxes, as they will be termed infrastructure funds. This will eventually reduce borrowing rates for the developer fraternity, which is already marred by unsold inventories and higher costs of credit. A GST waiver for under-construction properties and incentives for private investment in the housing sector will reap far reaching benefits. We sincerely hope these recommendations are considered in the upcoming budget.
Dhiraj Jain, Director, Mahagun Group
Being one of the core sectors of the economy, the real estate sector is still waiting to be granted infrastructure status. We expect this year’s Budget to increase the tax limit or increase the limit of the property value so that savings on taxation gets increased and the real estate sector gets more attention of buyers.
Sanjay Sharma, Director, SKA Group
To provide affordable housing to all, we request the Finance Minister to consider increasing the Income tax exception limit on housing loan interest from Rs 2 lakh to at least Rs 5 lakh, and continue the PMAY subsidy scheme. Also, this time, Budget should consider providing industry status to the real estate sector as it will reduce cost of funds and help in lowering the price of homes.
Kushagr Ansal, President CREDAI Haryana & Director, Ansal Housing
The real estate sector is also adopting and modernising itself day by day by implementing noble concepts like Green building. Budget 2019-20 must provide special incentives to the developers and projects offering eco-friendly concepts. It is time that real estate gets infrastructure status that will enable developers to raise funds at lower rates and reduce their cost of capital, which would eventually have a bearing on overall project cost.
Dhiraj Bora, Head Corporate Communication, Paramount Group
Right now, the sector is going through a phase where buyers are showing an inclination towards real estate assets. To smoothen the path, the Government must announce tax sops and rate cuts that may entice buyers.
Yash Miglani, MD, Migsun group
The housing sector is a key indicator of the country’s economic growth; it is not only a form of easy investment, but also helps in employment generation. There is an urgent need for the Government to support developers. We are looking forward to the infrastructure status of the real estate sector along with steps to bring in ease of doing business to help the sector.
Ram Raheja, Director at S Raheja Realty
Today, the government has quite a lot of proactive policies for server manufacturing, like PLI and other initiatives. Our take is that the budget should focus on a few important things for demand generation. We need to see how the local buying of made in India products is encouraged. The government should fund a scheme for tech adoption, and government purchases of high-end IT products should be encouraged/prioritized to help create more demand. Data Centre Operators should be incentivised to use more “Made in India” products. This will help the country to achieve the PMO’s objective of achieving atamnirbhar bharat. Local server technology development will help to bring cutting-edge technology to the country while also addressing the nation’s security concerns. Another thing I am looking forward to is the R&D side. There has to be special incentive for companies investing in R&D, there must be government incentivised and facilitated collaborations between the companies and premium Education and R&D facilities. This will be a major game changer as the R&D and education systems will become more aligned with the real world of commercially valid products, and the industry will benefit from innovation and local enhancement of technology to create global competence.
Pallavi Singh, Vice President, Super Plastronics PVT LTD (SPPL), India brand licensee of Westinghouse TV
a) Promote Make in India Initiatives like Building Tech Hub or boost Semiconductor manufacturing or efforts to be put under National Policy on Electronics (NPE)
Given the current semiconductor shortage in the world, our government should aid the potential sector and afford schemes under the NPE. Those aiming to manufacture in India and contributing towards the growth of the economy can be provided aid in the form of subsidies. The NPE can also help in providing a shoulder for our country and reducing its dependence on foreign nations if it were to correctly subsidise those who are willing to bring the relevant infrastructure, especially with respect to semiconductor/chipset manufacturing, to India. This, ideally, should also be backed by tax subsiding schemes so as to reduce the burden on an entity since the quantum of investment required is huge. The NPE can also be expanded to include and aid those already manufacturing consumer electronics in India as opposed to importing them.
b) Slash GST prices on TV – With the budget of 2022-23, we hope and sincerely urge that the government reduce GST on all consumer electronics to reflect those available on raw materials to reduce the disparity, especially since in today’s day and age, consumer electronics are tagged as necessities by all categories of consumers in India. With the current rate of 18% on televisions up to 32 inches only, there is a vast range of televisions that comes under the ambit of the 28% rate. A reduction in the rate to 18% even in televisions up to 43 inches will bring a huge relief since the majority of the consumers in India fall under the 32 to 43 range.
c) Reduction in Raw Material Prices or waiver of customs duty on imported inputs to make components.
Since there are no open cell manufacturers in India and the viability of setting up a plant is is far from certain, the Indian government should take this into consideration and reduce the custom duty on open cells to 0% from the current 5%. Had the same been present in India with imports providing competition or driving up open cell prices, it would still be reasonable to levy this duty. With the absence of the product because of the sheer lack of a facility, Indian manufacturers of televisions should not be made to pay for it. This will help to promote domestic manufacturing while also keeping our prices competitive should we aim to become an exporting country for consumer electronics.
d) Expectations regarding the retail sector – With the pandemic causing a major hit to the retail sector, the government should introduce schemes and rebates to help rebuild this sector. GST on the same should also be curbed to provide relief and relaxation from the current inflated economy and increase in the price of raw materials. It has become a tedious task to run brick and mortar stores, and for those retailing particularly through them, even more so.
Rohit Saboo, President & CEO, National Engineering Industries Ltd
“Despite the multiple challenges brought in various sectors due to the ongoing pandemic, Government has been making continuous efforts to ensure that economic scenario of our country is able to bounce back to normalcy. Keeping in mind the future of the country, budget should be growth oriented and should focus to continue providing financial support to SME/MSME sector, which is the future of our nation. The budget should be inclined towards making exports more attractive and reforms on ease of business should be rolled out.
It should provide incentives for capital expenditure and support people who had gone through hardships during the various Covid waves. The Government should sustain the efforts on implementation of PLI scheme and outlay adequate allocation in this scheme as this can prove to be a game-changer and boost manufacturing and exports.”
Sanjaya Mariwala, Executive Chairman and Managing Director of OmniActive Health Technologies and Founder President of the Association of Herbal and Nutraceuticals Manufacturers of India (AHNMI).
As we are preparing to fight the third wave and further strengthen the health of the nation, the 2022 budget should focus on strengthening and substantially promoting Preventive healthcare services. Young India is highly focused on preventive care and overall well-being. Rising awareness has significantly added to the demand for dietary supplements and other Nutra products. We urge the government to look at the socio-economic benefits that the nutraceutical sector offers and extend its support for the sector. 3 things if rolled out immediately will help in enhancing the nutritional index of the population and the same time, expand exports manifold.
a. PLI Scheme for the nutraceutical sector – There is a need to focus on building an agri-supply chain, robust research and development of infrastructure and encourage innovation. This is where the PLI scheme can contribute monetarily and non-monetarily at all levels of research, technology, and manufacturing. PLI scheme if carefully crafted with an integrated approach can significantly boost the agriculture sector too. The industry is happy to work with the government and develop a scheme jointly.
b. Promotive taxation – As compared to the pharma sector, Nutra products are taxed higher. We need to look at giving equal importance to the nutraceutical sector and bring more progressive taxations in line with the pharma products. Currently, pharma products are taxed between 5-12% while Nutra products are taxed at 18%. The pandemic has proven that it is people’s behaviour and immunity system that will determine the course of the pandemic. A report by Global Wellness Economy identified an upsurge in immunity focused food consumption and supplement use due to Covid-19. For a healthy nation, it is important to promote Nutra products and pricing will play a crucial role in the consumption habits given the purchasing power of a larger population.
c. Including corporates under NMPB Scheme – National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB) along with Ayush and Herbal industry bodies are working towards promoting medicinal plant cultivation. Corporates and industry players should also be included as part of the scheme to encourage backward and vertical integration. This will also ensure higher cultivation by the industry players to facilitate clinical research.
The nutraceutical sector offers significant opportunities for India across the value chain from farms to formulations. The industry helps in strengthening the overall healthcare sector by preventing diseases and acting as a gatekeeper.
Dr.Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Co-Founder of Venture Catalysts and Managing Director of 9Unicorns
“The Indian startup ecosystem became the third-largest in the world in 2021, with 90 unicorns, 8 startup IPOs, and an almost fourfold increase in total funding over last year to reach $42 billion. But, despite the stellar performance, the sector remains fraught with significant challenges that we anticipate the Union Budget to address. Currently, the Capital Gains Tax rate on unlisted shares differs from that on listed shares, resulting in higher taxes for startup founders and early-stage investors. To achieve parity, they can be rationalized at par with listed securities. The Union Budget is expected to include tax breaks for new businesses, as well. In order to encourage consolidation among startups in the service and organized retailing sectors, India is considering allowing losses and accumulated depreciation to be carried forward during company amalgamation.
We also envisage that the Budget will prioritize Domestic Capital participation, a favourable investment climate in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, incentives to establish incubators in every state, tax breaks for FDIs, and startup infrastructure development. This will also aid in the globalization of Indian startups, as 42% intend to go global by 2022. For instance, a seed startup that is not yet generating revenues is expected to follow the same compliances as a medium or large company, thereby placing an unnecessary burden on the founder or core team to manage compliances, often at an additional cost. This needs to be streamlined because it diverts energy away from the core focus and into non-value-added activities.”
Jaya Vaidhyanathan, CEO, BCT Digital
Neeraj Dhawan, Managing Director, Experian India
Dr. Atul Goel, MD, Goel Ganga Group & President (Elect.), NAREDCO Pune
While the real estate sector is looking at a robust housing demand revival in 2022, it also expects the Union Budget 2022 to play a supportive and enabling role. The real estate sector is looking at a few tax relaxations such as hike in Rs 2 lakh rebate under section 24, as in the aftermath of the pandemic, the profit margins are already low and developers have to compensate for the lost time. A single window clearance mechanism has remained a demand for many years now. In addition to this, it is an opportune moment to award industry status to the real estate sector so that it can avail cheaper credit facilities from financial institutions. In addition to this, a GST waiver for under-construction properties, and incentives for private investment in affordable housing sector will be enabling. Easing of liquidity and short term tax holidays might go a long way in boosting overall recovery of the realty sector.
Finance : YS Chakravarti, MD & CEO, Shriram City
“The 2022 Union Budget should focus on reviving the financial sector, the backbone of the economy by focusing on rural development and MSMEs to increase livelihood opportunities and provide safety nets. We expect harmonization of regulations for NBFCs and Banks, specifically on tax and recovery measures. Deposit-taking NBFCs should be empowered to offer guarantees similar to banks under DICGC that will strengthen their liability pipeline. In addition to the above, to boost MSME lending, retail loans to individuals and small businesses need to be treated differently compared to large corporate loans. There is a need for an effective refinance mechanism (similar to NHB refinance) to ensure liquidity and easier access to finance. Push for environmentally friendly policies like the EV subsidy program – FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicle) to help tackle climate change will go a long way in benefitting the ecosystem.”
Real Estate, GST, Homebuyers
What can the homebuyers expect from the Budget?
Anurag Mathur, CEO, Savills India says, “At a time when the economy is anxious about recovery due to the Omicron threat, we look forward to a positive approach from the budget. In addition to agriculture, the focus is likely to be maintained on the manufacturing, infrastructure, and real estate sector in the budget. On the wish list, there is extension of credit linked subsidy scheme (CLSS) and enhancement in interest deduction limits on housing loans.”
Farshid Cooper, MD, Spenta Corporation says, “With signs of revival already visible over the last few months, the realty sector is looking at robust housing demand in 2022 and beyond. While interest rates are already at their lowest, a tax holiday for homebuyers will go a long way in boosting the market sentiment, nudging fence sitters to take a decision.”
Personal tax relief, either by a cut in tax rates or favourably readjusted tax slabs, would be favourable for the homebuyers. The last deductions limit under Section 80C (to Rs 1.5 lakh a year) was in 2014 hence, this long pending demand from the buyers.
What can developers expect from the Budget?
Anurag Mathur, CEO, Savills India suggests that, “Focus will once again be on infrastructure status for the real estate sector. It has the potential to unlock a host of benefits for boosting foreign as well domestic investment. Reduction in GST rates of key construction material, Introduction of alternative asset classes in REITs could fundamentally increase both retail and investor participation in the real estate sector. A benevolent approach towards the financially depleted demand side through additional tax deductions will be welcome too. The country is poised for growth in Life sciences R&D. A special policy focus on this aimed at attracting investment in R&D real estate will provide a great platform for the future. All these will go a long way in attracting investment, accelerating demand, and supporting a higher growth trajectory.”
Farshid Cooper, MD, Spenta Corporation also adds that, “Emphasis should be given to stalled/ stressed projects, apart from providing impetus to affordable and rental housing as we enter 2022. This will likely free up capital and provide liquidity to the sector. Additionally, serious thoughts need to be given to GST towards major input materials as the rising cost structure could lead to long term increase in prices thereby softening demand.”
Real Estate: Shishir Baijal, Chairman, Managing Director, Knight Frank India
GST, Electronics, import duty: Avneet SIngh Marwah, CEO SPPL, Exclusive Brand Licensee of THOMSON in India
“Just about when we are in the middle of another wave, Industry is realizing the importance of atma nirbhar bharat. GOI should take more proactive measures to neutralize imports from our neighboring country. As 65% of raw material in electronics is in our adjacent country, which keeps on fluctuating prices that destabilize the markets in India. On the other hand, the government has taken some path breaking decisions, to create this ecosystem by approving 76000cr under PLA scheme program for development of semiconductor chipset and display panels. We request the government to announce the timeline so that related industries can take full benefit out of it, as shouldn’t be just constrained to MOU.
Government should seriously reconsider the GST slab for electronics, currently a lot of items come under 28% slab. As per our honorable Union Minister of Meity Mr Rajeev Chandrasekhar India will be Hub of electronics manufacturing in next 2-5 years, it is only possible if the market grows. As India is a price sensitive market, if the government will charge 28% GST we will never be price competitive. All large appliances and TVs should be under 18% tax slab. The government in past has already given assurance if GST collection will be above 1lakh cr for one quarter they will consider it.
Another most important sector where the government needs to intervene to take strict measures and review how misleading they are is the cargo sector. We have seen 10times growth in sea freight in the recent past, along with that timeline have increased 2x. There is a big syndicate in this sector which is causing this delay. Which is causing huge loss to the economy as these delays are being managed at Indian sea ports as well.
We expect the government to have strict laws against brands which they have found doing unfair business practices like recently how government departments have acted against smartphones brands for invading tax, special law should be implemented for oversea companies mainly from mainland for showing predetermined losses with excess expenditure and not paying direct taxes for 2 years or more.
Government should consider a lower interest rate on consumer electronics; this will encourage consumers to buy higher ASP products. This will also help in digital India, as consumers will opt for more tech products.”
Digital Payments and MSMEs: Ramesh Narasimhan, CEO Designate, Worldline India
Fintech: Madhusudan Ekambaram, Co-Founder & CEO, KreditBee and Co-Founder, FACE (Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment)
“The Union Budget 2022-23 is a crucial one, considering economy’s efforts to fully recover and set on a growth path. In this imperative, focus on financial inclusion is very significant. The Government’s recognition of the enhanced operations and effectiveness of fintechs to reach out to the unserved and underserved population, as evident from multiple initiatives in recent times, is encouraging. We expect this emphasis to become more prominent in the upcoming budget. It is essential that the Government announce measures to ease the liquidity flow to NBFCs and fintechs. Further, while ensuring the right degree of regulation, relaxation of norms and tax liberalization to some extent will allow the fintech sector to boost their reach and operate effectively to offer innovative credit solutions to the borrowers. Focus should also be on enhancing the country’s digitization bid, to empower the consumers to avail various credit products.”
Automobile: Greg Moran, CEO & Co-Founder, Zoomcar
“The economy is on the road to recovery and the Union Budget 2022-2023 will be crucial for the Auto sector as it can facilitate the industry’s effective revival. We are confident that with the right policies and support, the sector is poised for growth. One of the key areas for both the government as well as the Auto sector is Electric Mobility. With several Indian and international groups keen to invest in the Electric Vehicle (EV) segment, the government should focus on bolstering the infrastructure to enable easy manufacturing and usage of EVs and EV-related elements such as charging kiosks to boost demand. With regards to technology, we are in the midst of one of the biggest tech-led transitions in India and the world and we expect that this year’s Union Budget will focus more on tech-led developments in the Auto sector. It presents the perfect opportunity for the industry to capitalize on and boost growth. We also look forward to more tax incentives for the travel and trade industry”
Agriculture: Dhruv Sawhney, Business Head and COO, nurture.farm
“Farmers in India still work on Agri models that are input-intensive, which affects their overall profitability. Enabling a lean agribusiness model should be a priority by developing shared economy platforms through which farmers can access farm equipment and machinery at substantially lower costs. Mechanisation in agriculture would improve productivity and yield, and India needs significant improvements in both these spheres. An impetus towards shared economy models and digitisation of Agri ecosystems in India would induce transparency into the entire sector – empowering farmers to make informed decisions and improve their output and incomes. Another way to improve farmer incomes is to focus on adopting sustainable agricultural practices. Incentivising this for Indian farmers will have a two-pronged impact – on the one hand, it will improve the carbon footprint of agriculture, making it climate-friendly, and on the other, by leveraging carbon credits, farmers will have a scope to earn higher incomes. With the second-largest arable land in the world, India can be a world leader in establishing the potential impact on climate and farmer incomes by adopting sustainable agriculture practices. Enabling public private partnerships in this domain can help Indian farmers leapfrog towards a climate friendly, sustainable and profitable agriculture.”
Hospitality: Pranav Dangi, Founder of Hosteller
“The prolonged effect of Covid-19 pandemic on the overall hospitality sector has created a burden on small to medium scale players to service their debt obligations. Ongoing pressure on such players to maintain high operational standards, as required in the hospitality industry, has pushed them towards higher operational costs and thereby leading to inability to service their debts. We feel, in the 2022-23 budget, the GoI shall create provisions to create liquidity for the travel & tourism industry, provide directions to the central bank to roll out low interest working capital loan schemes and expedite the paperwork process. This shall navigate the industry through the difficulties imposed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Startups, MSMEs: On behalf of Mr Roshan Farhan- Founder and CEO, Gobillion
“This year’s budget will be an important one to watch out for – given the Government’s focus in promoting startups and entrepreneurship in the country. We look forward to a startup friendly budget – with focus on making starting a company easier, streamlined compliance mechanisms and avenues for access to capital for early stage startups. We look forward to the Budget providing incentives to startups in tier 2+ towns to promote a more inclusive startup ecosystem. Startups in India will contribute strongly to realize our vision of a $5 trillion economy in the next few years.”
Agriculture and the food industry: Prithviraj Sen Sharma, Managing Director & Country Head, Agoro Carbon Alliance, India
“India is today in a unique position to drive long-range change towards building climate resilient mechanisms for agriculture and the food industry, and we expect the union budget to reflect some of these priorities very strongly for the coming year
Indian growers are poised to benefit greatly from the fresh thinking the administrative bodies have around building newer, smarter, more digitally-connected ways of producing more food with less resources. With initiatives like More Crop Per Drop, we are taking the first steps towards building longer term resiliency towards more and more frequent climate swings & shifts in the geo-political scenario to cement India’s place as one of the most important node points ensuring food security globally. The upcoming union budget should reflect the shift in attitude towards being more grower-centric, building highly resilient food distribution mechanisms and ensuring our farmers are adequately compensated for their work.”
IT, Startups: Siddharth Kukatlapalli, Co-Founder and CBO, Syntizen
“India, together, has moved towards the ‘e’ world. Whether it is commerce, finance, agriculture, education and learning, corporate, or any other industry you pick, technology and the Internet have reached all households in the country, in some way or the other. With the pandemic hitting the economy, the Internet and technology infrastructure held the country and its people up and functioning. Keeping all this in mind, we must acknowledge that the ‘Digital Way’ is the way for the present and the future. As we move closer to the budget announcements, we are eagerly waiting to know what is new and upcoming for this year for all digital businesses – big, medium and small. With the adequate infrastructure, right audience (which already exists in the country), and ample support, Digital Businesses can flourish and support the people and the economy in all ways possible.
While we talk about our expectations from the budget, as the founder of a digital startup, we are always looking forward to the support that the government brings for us every year. Today, India stands third globally, after China and the USA, with the most number of unicorn startups. We are the future and we are making a better future. The startup ecosystem together has always been supported by the government and looks forward to the same in the year that is waiting ahead of us.”
Fintech: Zafar Imam, CEO, FinShell
“Technological and Digital disruption have impacted and led to the growth of all industries – the financial sector is at the top of that list. With the growing smartphone users and internet penetration, FinTech has become an invaluable part of each user’s life. The increasing users of digital financial platforms have brought in strong competition in the financial services industry. It goes without saying that with the access and usage of financial platforms online, the benefit has reached users irrespective of geographies, time and socio-economic boundaries. The consistent growth in the number of UPI users showcases and establishes the digital penetration in the payments business. There is also a significant growth in the investments and insurance sectors that has been led by this enhancing digital footprint.
At this time, with this growth, it is important for us as part of the larger industry to support and enable digital finances and its infrastructure to make each user’s life easier and smoother.”
Fintech: Tanul Mishra, CEO, Afthonia Lab
“For me, the fintech industry has only touched the tip of the infrastructure transformation iceberg. In the years to come, we are likely to see that transformation journey evolve and go deeper into the tier 2/3/4 cities and semi-urban and rural spaces to create true impact. This is only possible with the continued support extended by the government, in terms of reforms, flexible regulatory environments, and budgetary allocations towards state and regional sandboxes that help create structural and foundational changes to India’s complex financial services industry. According to a report by CLSA, it is said that the value of digital payments in India will grow 3x to touch $1 trillion by the financial year 2026 compared to $300 billion in the financial year 2021, and for that to happen, better infrastructure and connectivity along with the support to propel the industry “forward is the need of the hour”
EV & Green energy: Darsh Goleccha, Founder and CEO, Monech
“Focus areas of the current budget will be the EV & Green energy initiatives will be of high focus point with schemes to facilitate the same to be promoted: focus on offshore energy storage. Indian Mobility will be one of the highlights of this government policy, with tax breaks on manufacturing, consumption to be extended and new schemes may be launched. There will be clarity on creator taxations and gains from creator purchases and digital assets likely be announced. Spending on digital infrastructure will increase, whereas physical infrastructure may continue to have a standard budget allocation and hike with Technology Media Telecommunications being the major focus.FinTech policy and regulations may get stricter, however, some extensions and initiatives may be announced to promote cooperation between banks and FinTechs. Account Aggregator ecosystem to pick up post the budget. Expect a policy around international, startup IPOs to be released and startup index launch. Govt. regulations around Cryptocurrencies might be light however some policies might be floated for testing purposes.”
Hospitality sector: Pallavi Agarwal – Founder & CEO, goSTOPS
“The hospitality sector contributes 9% of India’s GDP and employs more than 4.5 crore people. Among the worst-hit industries, it plays an important role in the revival of the post-pandemic economy and hence needs special attention in the upcoming budget of 2022.
Since March 2020, India’s travel and hospitality sector has emerged as a domestic-demand-driven economy and proper government funding will ensure further sustainable pickup in domestic travel demand. My top expectations from Budget 2022 for the hospitality sector are – a) increased investment towards boosting the tourism infrastructure, and b) provision of better accessibility and connectivity to remote and mini tourist locations for a large cross-section of the population. Attention must also be given to providing tax breaks and interest-free subsidy options, thereby increasing investment in the sector. We must also focus on setting up more entrepreneurial cells and upskilling centres to build a skilled workforce that enhances customer experience, and supports the overall ecosystem, at large.
While the surge in Covid-19 cases has resulted in highly volatile consumer confidence towards travel – proactive and timely amendments will boost domestic operations, and help the industry bounce back sooner. ”
Startups: Adetee Agarwaal, Founder and CEO, PinkAprons
“According to us, our expectation from the budget is pretty simple i.e. We need to grow, and we need to expand. Small scale businesses should be offered interest-free loans, incentives and subsidies to survive, and manage their operations, besides lowering GST for cloud kitchens, home based food entrepreneurs and food tech startups. Since the food industry employs the highest number of employees after real estate, the taxation slabs and GST needs to be streamlined, and relaxed to help small and medium scale food entrepreneurs to grow and scale.
We need a major taxation reform on this front, and a comprehensive Govt sponsored program to enhance consumption, and make it easier for customers to order their foods online.”
SMEs, Textile: Pawan Gupta, CEO, Fashinza
“As a startup working for digitising a labour-intensive SME textile industry, we need to attract tech talent, investments, and promote India as a textile destination. Our biggest requests from the govt are to fix capital gains taxation for unlisted equity in line with listed equity for investors, and provide an ecosystem for credit availability and factoring facilities for SME manufacturers. ”
Fitness Industry: Amaresh Ojha, Business Head, RoundGlass Traqade & RoundGlass Gympik
“As the pandemic devastated India’s fitness and wellness sector, start-ups in the space provided a silver lining to a dark cloud by helping the industry adopt and transition to digitally-led service models. From personalised fitness to hybrid workout regimes to wellness-centric lifestyle products, their innovative solutions were instrumental in mitigating the pandemic’s impact on the fitness and wellness industry, estimated to be worth over $124 billion in 2019. With the threat of omicron on the rise, we would request the government to consider measures such as dedicated funds and more relaxed taxation policies for tech ventures in the space. In the upcoming Union Budget, doing so will not only help these high-potential start-ups drive economic growth and create sustainable employment opportunities but will also make the fitness experience more accessible, available, and affordable to a much larger section of India’s population.”
Gems and jewellery industry: Pankaj Khanna, Chairman, Khanna Gems
“The budget 2022-23 needs to emphasise on import duty being incurred for the import of raw diamond and other precious elements such as gold. This will help the jewellery industry in managing the high demand of gold and diamond jewellery. Additionally, revised budget for the regulation of online jewellery market is also needed. Monitoring of authentic transactions and data security are the key in the digital world.”
Pharma and Healthcare startup: Mithun Majumdar, Co-Founder, 750AD Healthcare Pvt. Ltd.
“The budget reports suggest that there will be an expenditure of Rs. 2,34,846 crore for health care for FY22. With omnicorn effecting almost every state, the budget allocation will help in fighting this situation well in the country. However, the budget must also focus on Data privacy policies and infrastructure development with the healthcare system working digitally now. With such massive data with healthcare organisations, it is important that data regulatory bodies are developed and privacy of every citizens data is secured.”
Amit Gupta, MD- Sag Infotech:
In the current situation, the Finance Minister can make important announcements in the budget aimed at accelerating economic reforms, promoting entrepreneurship, and providing relief to taxpayers. It is expected that, in this budget 2022, the government can decide the extent to which taxpayers will get tax exemption or what changes will be made in the tax structure for the next financial year. Announcements can be also made in the budget concerning education and further strengthening of the infrastructure of the country. This budget will also show whether the government increases or decreases excise duty, customs duty, import duty, cess on anything.
Startups: Neha Puri, CEO & Founder, Vavo Digital
“The government has exempted Angel tax on all government recognized startups which is a big relief. But on the other hand the complex tax system otherwise poses a lot of problems which needs to be simplified.”
Rajnish Gupta, India and Sub-Continent Lead, Zebra Technologies
“With India’s supply chain costs being one of the highest in the world, the Government of India should consider promoting the adoption of technologies like RFID, barcodes, workflow automation, and traceability solutions that will empower the warehousing and transport & logistics sectors with real-time visibility and actionable insights and help them make smarter decisions swiftly. The same can be introduced by the public sector and hospitals for similar reasons. Through this, greater efficiency and results can be achieved, while lowering overall operating costs. As India continues its transition into the digital economy, we need to be equipped with the right technology to achieve digital transformation, which contributes to stronger economic growth and success for India”.
Startups: Raj Das, Global Co-Founder & India CEO, Hirect:
Sharing the expectations on the Union Budget 2022 from startups and the hiring industry, Raj Kumar Das, Global Co-founder & CEO of Hirect said: “The covid-19 pandemic has left a major imprint on every industry, and everyone expects the Union Budget 2022 to get the economy back on track. Since startups are the backbone of job creation, they should be given lucrative incentives and tax relaxation. Any initiative which works out for a hiring platform to help first-time job seekers get into work without hefty tax liability or even a reduction of 18% GST slab will encourage the startup sectors to leverage professional services for business growth and get back on track with their operations efficiently.”
“In today’s world of globalisation, skill development is a critical tool for improving labour efficacy and quality, which leads to increased productivity and economic growth. India is today one of the youngest nations in the world with more than 62% of the population in the working-age group (15-59 years). India will anticipate a 32% increase in the labour force in the coming years. However, according to current data, barely 2% of India’s overall workforce are skilled labourers. So it is expected that the government will focus more on skill development, which will further boost employment in the country. We expect the government to handle the crisis in a strategic manner. It is high time for the government to place a greater emphasis on the hiring industry as the key to long-term, and strong growth accompanied by solid employment will ensure that we are laying the groundwork for a period of double-digit growth.”
Shashank Pandey, Co-founder, ConveGenius
Building a solid digital education ecosystem that enables skilling is a sure-fire way to combat the current pandemic. The NEP-2020 initiated significant changes in the Education System of our country – it created a niche for EdTech, permitted flexibility in the learning curve, and emphasised blended learning. With the government’s numerous laudable steps to build an e-learning ecosystem, India still requires a lot to educate its youth, and the upcoming union budget may open doors to the facilitators working diligently to bring educational equity to this NayaBharat. I hope the upcoming Union Budget would support the perfect blending of digital & traditional education and strive to encourage the adoption of emerging technologies. Moreover, the government should make more efforts to engage in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Science training sessions at the grassroots level and build up capacities and acumen for new-age tech domains in educational institutions.
Another important aspect to be considered is improved internet connectivity infrastructure across the nation that promotes last-mile access, affordable 5G devices, and most importantly helps EdTech companies with strong data protection laws.
Nakul Mathur, MD, Avanta India:
In the new budget, we would request the finance minister to reduce the TDS deduction rates on coworking spaces as most of the receivables from the client is towards services. It would be best if the finance minister considers to bring coworking spaces into 2% TDS slab as in case of services from the present 10%. This will immensely help the coworking spaces in management of their cash flows.
Madhu Agrawal, Co-founder of Clever Harvey
“The last two years of the pandemic have been full of ups and downs for many industries worldwide and needless to say, the education industry isn’t spared either. While Edtech has seen a significant boom, there are factors that still need to be reconsidered by the Government of India in the upcoming Union Budget that can help boost the edtech industry which is the future of education.
According to us, one of the key areas of concern for all edtech companies is the disparity in the GST treatment of print educational solutions vs digital educational solutions. For example, a textbook is charged 5% GST whereas the same book in an online format is charged 18% GST. We’ve seen the potential of online educational material increasing access to education and the quality of education. We are expecting this GST should be reduced so that more people can invest in digital education. We hope that the Government of India reconsiders this in the upcoming budget announcement and builds a fair and equivalent system for offline as well as online education providers.
Sakshi Vij, Founder, Myles Cars
Honorable Finance Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman should look at aggravating the domestic demand by further incentivizing individual and commercial consumption of EV, pan India. The global pandemic has shown that the world wants an alternative for China in the processed goods industry. India must cash in on this opportunity by creating an EV-manufacturing hub. In Budget 2022, we expect the government to boost EV financing and introduce viable options for customers to use them. More EVs should be available in India through preferential taxation for imports. Moreover, there is a need for a simpler access window for startups that can easily solve sustainability and climate change goals with government and policy-making bodies.
Uttam Kumar, Co-Founder & COO, HungerBox
The pandemic’s impact has reverberated across domains impacting the overall economy, businesses across industries, and the startup sector. F&B has been particularly hard-hit, and the government has attempted to bring growth back.
1. Double taxation was a significant challenge for small food vendors, and the authorities have aimed to address this problem with the recent GST announcement. GST collections are likely to increase following this move. We believe this can be a game-changer for the sector.
2. The government has undertaken a staged reduction of corporate tax. The government should accelerate this game plan.
3. We would like the government to simplify MSME loan disbursements. Currently, asset-intensive MSMEs tend to receive loans more quickly, while those in the service sector find the process challenging.
In addition, to keep NPAs to a minimum, banks prefer MSMEs that are already profitable. This approach may be detrimental to spurring entrepreneurship. Banks should identify new loan criteria such as billings of the last three months and the ticket size of customer transactions. They should also not restrict loans to collateral value only.
We are hopeful the upcoming union budget will address these policy changes to support the F&B sector.
Varun Vashisthaa, Founder, HairVeda
“The pandemic has been full of ups and downs for several industries worldwide. According to Health Union Minister data, the Ayurveda economy has witnessed up to 90 percent growth after the COVID-19 pandemic since Ayurveda has gained global acceptance.
We are expecting a waiver of GST on the products with a license to sell as Ayurvedic products/medicines. Later, It will be passed on to consumers in the form of price cuts and this initiative will lead to increased consumption of Ayurvedic products. The government of India should support the private sector in such a way that it will see decreasing indulgence and reliance on imports of API’s (Active Ingredients) and more focus on indigenous Ayurvedic products/medicine
Nitin Misra, Co-founder, indiagold
“With the government making progress on several fronts, we anticipate a policy framework in the budget that allows FinTechs to work closely with relevant government institutions to improve the distribution and adoption of existing gold monetization schemes, as well as launch new products like the gold savings account. All compliances, including incorporation, GST, other taxes, EPFO, and other registrations, should be handled through a single window in India.
To stimulate entrepreneurship in India, the government should also allow entrepreneurs to carry forward their loss of income to offset against future income. Furthermore, reduced capital gains on mergers and acquisitions will help the sector grow.”
Ujjwal Singh, CEO and President, Infinity Learn
To address the rising demand for digital learning, the EdTech industry has embraced new technology and resources. EdTech companies in India are creating effective solutions and serving as vehicles for socioeconomic development and transformation through innovation and scalable technology. The use of technology in education, or digitalization, has aided the spread of quality education throughout the country, particularly in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. EdTech companies have helped to democratize access to high-quality education and improve student engagement by using technology technologies. For its expansion, the industry is looking for government help. Ramping up of digital infrastructure is the top demand of the edtech sector. Because of infrastructure issues, cities in Tier 3 and Tier 4 struggled with online education.
We also expect the government to recognize Edtech as an industry group, allowing it to engage in decentralizing learning at all levels and reconsidering the taxation of ESOPs. For a fair and equal system for offline and online education providers, the government should cut GST on online learning and materials. Infinity Learn by Sri Chaitanya believes in harnessing educational technologies to meet the country’s ever-increasing demand for both online and offline, as well as collaborating with the government to reduce learning loss and develop a New India.
Anshuman Narain, Vice-President, CashBean (P.C.Financial Services Pvt Ltd.
The main impetus that FinTech needs today is the further dignification of India through state investment in e-infrastructure. A lot of the country is still behind in terms of high-speed internet access and while private players have proliferated the internet, a state-focused effort in this direction will provide manifold growth to the tech industry (and subsequent tax accruals for the government).
Sanket Shendure, Co-Founder and CEO, Minko
“About $400 -500 billion or 30 to 40 lakh crores of B2B payments from retailers to distributors in India’s retail market happen through cash. If the government provided some incentives to small shop owners to make supplier payments digitally, in the budget, it could potentially save costs and bring about increased financial inclusion”
Anil Pinapala, CEO & Co-Founder of Vivifi India
In the upcoming union budget, I hope to see a strong mandate for financial inclusion and assistance from the GoI for start-ups attempting to bring in credit for all transcending language, literacy, location, livelihood like FlexPay. Relaxation in norms and assistance with liquidity to lending NBFC fintechs who are attempting to offer credit to the under-served and unserved would be a welcome move. I also hope that non-prime lending could be brought under priority sector so that NBFCs can truly work to bring credit to all.
‘Nandini Mansinghka, Co-founder & CEO, Mumbai Angels Network’
In the last few years, the government has launched multiple policies and schemes for the welfare and growth of the startup community. With young entrepreneurs entering this ecosystem at a steady pace, we hope that resources, funds and capital provided by the government are easy to access. We further expect from the government to create an easy regulatory system, policies, and norms for startups so that organisations can run business without any administrative obstacles.
Sushant Kumar, CEO & MD, AMO Mobility Solutions Pvt Ltd.
“We are hopeful for a well-planned and productive budget session that will provide long-term incentives for EV participants, particularly manufacturers, who are committed to innovation and R&D in the sector. We may also see some bold moves from the ruling party to accommodate foreign and Indian private enterprises in the sector in order to boost indigenous battery production. The budget is expected to include big statements to encourage semiconductor producers from Japan, Taiwan, and the US to invest in India, which will help the mobility sector in providing smart technologies in electric vehicles. The Growth will go on for Electric Industry @ 500% and 2022 is going to be a revolution. Also, there should be a Uniform policy in each state which is supported by all federals.”
Nitin Mathur, CEO, Tavaga Advisory Services
“In the last two years, the fintech sector, which has always been a dynamic space, has seen a rapid influx of developments. First, we saw a huge increase in e-commerce and a shift toward contactless payments as a result of the pandemic. The industry clearly expects a level playing field for all the FinTech players.
Regulations, especially around those set of companies who tend to act and collect the personal data of their customers without any appropriate license should be asked to cease their operations or follow the rules laid out by the respective regulating authority post coming under the ambit of a proper license.
Regulation around cryptocurrencies is much needed, as soon as possible. There is a lot of confusion and uncertainty around the tax to be paid from the profits made out of trading in cryptocurrencies. While the budget would not be the appropriate place for the FM to regulate cryptocurrencies or the attached Blockchain technology, clarity is expected on the taxation front of it.
There should be more focus on educating the commoners about Digital Currency, India intends to bring in the market. Tax concessions and incentives around digital payments will ensure a further boost in tax revenue collected by the government.”
Harminder Singh Multani, CEO, MyDentalPlan Healthcare Pvt. Ltd.
“For 2021-2022, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had allocated the budget outlay of ₹2,23,846 crore for health and well-being. This year, it is expected that the budget will further accentuate the focus on better health infrastructure in the country. While there is a lot of impetus being laid of healthcare, (and rightly so), oral health is still not getting the importance that it deserves. It is a well-established fact that oral well-being is the gateway to overall health. This year, the government should look at steps to give a fillip to this segment.
One of the ways the Government could do this is by giving a special place to dental insurance. Currently, premiums paid towards health insurance are expected under 80C. However, to drive faster adoption of dental insurance in the country, the government should consider giving a special 200% exemption on premium paid towards dental insurance. This will not just help in lowering the cost of treatment but also encourage people to visit a dentist when they need one. In our opinion, this would help drive the dental treatment market by 10x over the next 3-4 years.”
Akshita Gupta, CEO, ABL Workspace
“The coworking segment has grown exponentially over the years and has had a major impact on the performance and utilisation of commercial real estate. I feel now is the time when we should keep into consideration this very aspect and ensure progressive policy reforms to boost the market’s growth. I would want to put forth a humble request to the Finance Ministry to recognizing the coworking space under schemes such as REIT, provide tax benefits and consider reducing the TDS deduction rates to upscale the segment. It would be great if govt can consider bringing coworking spaces into the 2% TDS bracket from the present 10% slab. This will not only boost the market’s growth but will further allow the coworking spaces seamlessly manage the cash flows since it is a service-based segment. I strongly feel that these reforms if introduced will play a major role in driving the growth of the real estate sector in the times to come. Talking from start-ups POV, it is usually entrepreneurs from the early and mid-start-ups that prefer coworking spaces. However, costings like registration charges and stamp duty at registrar offices are borne by the coworking offices and if government can reduce these charges, then it would directly benefit the end-users as they will have to spend less for the services. I am also of the view that if the requisite financial assistance can be provided to the start-ups, then it will indirectly help in driving the growth of the coworking spaces as well.”
Priyadarshi Mohapatra, Founder, CureBay
“It is indeed heart-warming to see how the healthcare industry has been tirelessly helping the country in sailing through the pandemic crisis. The sector has played a pivotal role in ensuring that the country efficiently battles with the coronavirus and will continue to align its efforts for the benefit of the citizens. We appreciate the fact that the government acknowledges this and has contributed to upscaling the market by launching initiatives such as the PLI scheme for domestic manufacturing of Drug Intermediaries, National Digital Health Mission, etc. However, the healthcare sector still requires a lot of support for sustained growth.”
“We do agree with the fact that COVID-19 induced healthcare transformation in India, however, we need to raise the public health spending to 2.5-3.5% of the GDP to keep supporting the healthcare revolution. We would also like to request the government to create REITs on healthcare and introduce medical innovation fund enabling companies with capital to promote digital healthcare infrastructure. Setting up strong digital healthcare platforms will help rural India get better and quick assistance in their medical requirements. We also expect the government to announce reforms around incentivization of private investment in healthcare infrastructure, health insurance coverage, skilling the existing healthcare workforce, and rationalizing GST on healthcare offerings to further boost the growth of the sector. On the whole, it is high time that we should focus on bridging the rural-urban gap from the healthcare perse and ensure that high-end healthcare services are available and accessible for all.”
Dr Arjun Kalyanpur, Chief Radiologist & CEO, Teleradiology Solutions
“An accurate diagnosis is essential for good patient care. Teleradiology is a tech enabled health care service. As one of the leader providers of teleradiology in India, we would like to see growth of this sector in India as it can revolutionise early high-quality diagnostics. A nationwide teleradiology solution and service for low-income patients funded by the government could enable this. Made in India low-cost diagnostic scanners need to be encouraged with state level med tech parks with tax breaks and set up costs covered.
Ratan Deep Singh, India CEO, SkillUp Online
“We would really hope and expect the Indian Govt. to step up investments & focus on Digital infrastructure especially in the rural & semi-urban areas of India. A larger focus and stepped-up investments will help fast track the digital skilling of rural and semi-urban populations in India, thereby solving multiple issues of unemployment, massive upcoming gap in demand & supply of future jobs, making India a global hub for digital investments.
Additionally, to promote and encourage digital skilling in India, we would hope that the GST rates could be reduced to 5% given that pricing is definitely a concern specially for students, unemployed & under privileged communities.
Moreover, we would welcome and appreciate any GOI initiatives and subsidies to promote digital learning for learners and edtech companies working in this space”.
Mangesh Panditrao, CEO & Co- Founder, Shoptimize
” Relaxation in GST for D2C brands: The GST rate for services is higher than and the products these brands sell. Usually, the GST credit takes time to be refunded, impacting their liquidity and cash flow. A reduction in GST can thus play a critical role in business continuity.
Reduce duties on oil: Tier 2 & 3 cities are contributing to eCommerce sales in a big way and to boost the sales further, a reduction in transportation costs will help companies save costs”
Raghunandan Saraf, Founder and CEO-Saraf Furniture:
With the Government’s strong focus on big bang reforms to strengthen the economy and promoting entrepreneurship through ‘Make in India’ and PLI schemes is a big plus, expectations are high from the upcoming.
The finance minister will aim to support the tax payers in direct or indirect ways to boost the disposable income in their hands. The tax relief will eventually lead to more liquidity in the hands of the buyers. Nothing could be better if the government slash the tax rates for both buyers and sellers as it will rejuvenate the market as the demand for housing and high end products is poised to rise.
However, the expected rate hikes from the RBI could be a major concern to watch out for as it may push out the liquidity from the economy at a fast pace.
Jaya Vaidhyanathan, CEO, BCT Digital
As far as Union Budget 2022-23 is concerned, expectations are at an all-time high. The good news is that despite the obvious pandemic-induced impediments, economic recovery and expansion are still on track, and we seem to be moving closer to the US$5 trillion target. This is in no small part due to the recovery measures taken by the Government of India since 2016. Positive indicators in the stock market could also be interpreted as signs of progress. In addition, December 2021 saw robust GST collections of Rs.1.3 lakh crores, indicative of an era of monthly figures consistently above the Rs.1 lakh-crore-mark. On the flip side, persistent and high inflation in retail and wholesale leaves the economy in a precarious position.
For consumers and salaried employees, simple tax-related exemptions and benefits would be welcoming this year. On the business side, reduction in duties, concessions, simplified compliance measures, investment incentives, and state-sponsored programs to boost manufacturing, are all desirable steps to keep up the momentum of growth. It is also most critical to acknowledge the role of fintech in the future of economics. The expectation is for the government to reward and sustain fintech intervention to bolster India’s position as a global growth leader.
KP Vinod, Managing Director, Alliances & Govt. Partnerships, The/Nudge Foundation
“The development sector (non-government) has responded rapidly in augmenting government efforts during the pandemic. With appropriate but not burdensome checks and balances, and with incentives, the government can encourage a massive growth of socially conscious investments in healthcare, education, skilling and employment, urban/ rural livelihoods and in social entrepreneurship. Government should aim to create a more resilient economy through this budget, with an emphasis on bolstering the social sector to accelerate the revival from the impact of the pandemic. Only strong collaboration between governments, corporates, innovators and civil society can help create the impact we need.”
Ankur Gupta, Founder & CEO of Ruptok Fintech Pvt Limited
Budget 2022 should introduce regulations that will help in greater credit access to people and curbing illegal activities while building trust in the digital lending process for the last mile. In line with the government’s goal of creating a digital economy, introducing credit schemes will incentivize the sector and help in providing timely credit to Customers that have struggled due to the lack of credit accessibility through traditional means of lending which has directly affected their business opportunity. We have also seen a rise in the number of start-ups who have turned unicorns in the last year that showcases the potential of the startup ecosystem in India. We expect the government to introduce regulatory changes that would create an easy line of access for start-ups & MSMEs to secure credit from online lending players. This will further help in boosting our economy. Gold Loan Principal repayment qualifies for deduction under section 80C of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Apart from home loans, many other investments and expenses qualify for deduction under the same 80C, which has an upper limit of Rs 1.5 lakh per annum. This limit has not been increased for a long time and there is an expectation that it will get enhanced this year. “Personal tax relief, either by a cut in tax rates or favorably readjusted tax slabs, would definitely be welcome for homebuyers since the last increase in the deduction limit under Section 80C (to Rs 1.5 lakh a year) was in 2014 and an upward revision has been long overdue.” By Ankur Gupta, Founder and CEO, Ruptok Fintech Private Limited, a fintech platform for gold loans.
Dr. Manoj Singh, CEO Of RUBIKA India
National Education Policy, 2020 (NEP) demonstrated commitment to the educational reforms and reaffirmed the recommendation of increasing public investment on education to 6% of GDP as recommended earlier in NEP in 1968.This will be a welcomed move but budgetary allocation merits detailing and attention. The budget should prioritize funding for R&D in both public and private institutions. The cabinet is expected to make sufficient amendments to strengthen the current learning ecosystem by bridging the digital divide through appropriate infrastructural developments. Additionally, the budget is projected to provide some form of financial assistance to the private sector, such as low-interest loans. Such an endeavor has already been taken in several countries, encouraging private institutes to adopt new teaching methods and provide students with unique courses. The budget should also consider establishing a ‘National Education Bank,’ like the ‘National Housing Bank,’ to give education loans at the lowest possible interest rate. The budget should also have more initiatives like the National Educational Alliance for Technology (NEAT) so that skill-oriented courses like animation and design can be introduced at all school levels in view of the growing demand in the creative industries such as AVGC, Media, Adv, PR, etc. Also, the government must look at capacity building by encouraging institutions/ universities offering such creative courses. The government should also look at providing research incentives to encourage academia-industry collaboration, as well as research credits for multidisciplinary research and pedagogical implementation. This will assist the country in capitalizing on global prospects due to the demographic dividends. Another expectation from the budget is reduction in the GST slab for education from 18% to 5% so that more people can invest in education and help shape a brighter future. ‘’
Karanvir Singh, Founder & CEO, Pariksha – Vernacular EdTech Company
“In the current times, to build a successful startup one needs to have a strong team. However, retaining talent is not as easy when you are running a young business. In order to be able to attract and retain talent a lot of startups started offering ESOPs. We really would like the government to consider the tax structure on ESOPS, such that it be taxed only at the time of sales and not at the time of exercising, as the case currently is. Additionally, a centralised Professional Tax system on the lines of GST will further help, and increase the ease of business for startups operating in multiple states”
Rachit Agrawal, Co-founder & Director of AdmitKard
“This budget we expect to see the Indian economy moving it’s focus to build stronger capabilities in the school infrastructure to enable the hybrid model of education which has become essential in the recurring pandemic scenario. Additionally, early education needs to get more tech enabled and we expect that should work in favor of the EdTech community. Further, there should be greater emphasis on skills and language training in order to make Indian youth ready for the global economy, and encouraging more Indians to migrate for work or studies,”
Himanshu Tyagi, CEO & Founder of Digikull
In India, any skill development related service must come under the lowest tax slab. The government should revisit the 18% GST on skilling, which is very demotivating for the students who want to gain skill-related education. Even the loans related to education must be provided for lower interest rates. Only then will we be able to say that in India the policies are encouraging towards education and literacy. During the pandemic too the edtech played a vital role in keeping the show running for education institutes. Now they need the Budget to consider a decent allocation to the sector to suffice for long term tax exemption, technology and accessibility.
Sahil Miglani, Co-Founder, Geekster
“The Pandemic has changed the way learning happens and fast-forwarded the adoption of online education by 5-10 years. Delivering quality education to every town and village of the country is now possible, provided we improve the digital infrastructure.We expect the Government to revisit the high GST on education related services, and overall higher budget allocation to this sector,”
Pankaj M Munjal, Chairman & Managing Director, HMC, a Hero Motors Company.
“Cycling can be a great way to keep your fitness routine going while the world fights Omicron and prepares for new restrictions. It is not advisable to visit crowded and enclosed spaces such as the gym at this time when a new variant is spreading its claws. As a result, people will continue to choose activities such as walking and cycling. In the last two years, we’ve witnessed a cycling revolution, with many people taking up cycling for better health and fitness. Due to the pandemic, the Indian government has extended the deadline for implementing the Smart Cities Mission until June 2023. Now is the time to build a countrywide cycling infrastructure that is friendly to citizens. This could be part of the government’s Smart Cities Mission’s focus on mobility solutions. We need this cycling culture to grow and continue in our country, so we are looking forward to better cycling infrastructure in all major cities and towns, as this will encourage a new culture, namely, cycling to work in India, which will reduce problems such as pollution. Hero Cycles is dedicated to fostering a cycling culture in India and will do so in the years ahead.” said Mr. Pankaj M Munjal, Chairman & Managing Director, HMC, a Hero Motors Company.
Lokendra Ranawat, Founder and CEO- Wooden Street
We are optimistic that the budget of this year will provide the much-needed impetus to the economy considering the downturn and degradation due to the crisis last year. The health sector will be motivated. This includes the allocation in the healthcare sector across the entire infrastructure, where the special focus should be on a reliable medical cold chain for the success of any NIP (National Immunization Programme). We are anticipating that Complete Funding of “Atma Nirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana” will be initiated by the government.
As we can see, the raw materials’ prices are very high and it’s not uniform and controlled. In this case, the government should at least rationalize the GST on manufacturing for MSME. Experts suggested in this field that GST for manufacturing should be brought down to at least 12 percent from 18 percent
We are optimistic that the budget of this year will provide the much-needed impetus to the economy considering the downturn and degradation due to the crisis last year. The health sector will be motivated. This includes the allocation in the healthcare sector across the entire infrastructure, where the special focus should be on a reliable medical cold chain for the success of any NIP (National Immunization Programme). We are anticipating that Complete Funding of “Atma Nirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana” will be initiated by the government.
As we can see, the raw materials’ prices are very high and it’s not uniform and controlled. In this case, the government should at least rationalize the GST on manufacturing for MSME. Experts suggested in this field that GST for manufacturing should be brought down to at least 12 percent from 18 percent
Suyash Gupta, Director General, Indian Auto LPG Coalition
“With Budget 2022 just a couple of weeks away, the Indian Auto LPG industry very much expects the government to first, incentivize OEMs enough to quickly launch LPG variants, which would also encourage people to purchase auto LPG vehicles and thus provide immediate relief to the fast deteriorating air quality in India. Second, the budget must also ensure that auto LPG fuel must be brought down to the GST slab of 5 percent from the current 18% which has been a deterrent factor for both the industry and the end-users. Three, at the same time, the government should immediately consider bringing down the LPG conversion kit under the GST tax slab of 5% away from the prohibitive 28 percent. In this context, they must also relax the type approval norms with a view to aligning with the European standards which would galvanize the retrofitment market. At the same time, the government’s incentivizing the uptake of electric vehicles through crores and crores of subsidies must also be replicated for the auto LPG sector which deserves to be extended the same preferential treatment. It needs to be noted that auto LPG already has a substantive infrastructure in place, unlike electric vehicles which still require enormous supporting infrastructure including the charging infrastructure. In fact, Budget 2022 is just the right opportunity for the government to not only institute policy change but also to demonstrate clear intent for a fuel which has zero warming potential as compared to the carbon-based petrol and diesel.” said Mr. Suyash Gupta, Director General, Indian Auto LPG Coalition.
Manish Aggarwal, Director, Bikano, Bikanervala Foods Pvt Ltd
“With a revival in demand and consumption, we are looking forward to 2022 with hopes of sustaining a healthy growth trend while catering to the increasing online consumers. We’re investing in building capability for e-commerce and Direct-to-Consumer channels, since these are the key factors of future growth. Hopefully, 2022’s budget will focus on investments in rural infrastructure development, an extension of farm credit provisions, and job creation. With the pandemic, the cost of raw and packaging material has risen, resulting in many industries being forced to hike prices. We need help in tackling high inflation levels, as also in digitalisation of rural areas. Online is the way ahead and for industries to be able to leverage that opportunity, digitalization is key. Even after two lockdowns, the virus continues to present newer challenges every day. By setting up necessary medical facilities to deal with this ongoing situation, the government will take an important step in rekindling hope.
As we witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the growth was brought about by channeling the unorganised players to mainstream business, with Offline to Online or O2O being the key theme. O2O will lead to transparency in payments, transactions, compliance with taxes, labour laws and larger employment opportunities for the youth. Specific to e-commerce and e-grocery, this budget will also be a great time for the government to rationalise GST rates, compliance processes, FDI policies, and ride the buoyancy revenue curves. The Government has always been generous towards our sector however, we hope that it extends additional support towards our industry in terms of investment, expansion, and transformation apart from the policies.” said Mr. Manish Aggarwal, Director, Bikano, Bikanervala Foods Pvt Ltd.
Rimo Bose, PR and Branding Manager, TCL India
“We are expecting that the import tariff will be reduced, so that our country can match up with the other competing countries like China, Mexico, Thailand and more. Additionally, we have witnessed much of compliance reforms in the last two years, the PLI schemes have indeed helped in domestic and international investments, but we have to keep in mind that setting up manufacturing units might take several years, so the investment from the Government side will boost the ‘Make in India’ movement.”
Lokesh Acharya, Director & Co- Founder- Fincorpit Consulting Private limited
Budget 2022 expectation: Standard deduction hike, income tax relief for saving for kids’ education. For paid individuals and pensioners, the standard deduction is a deduction allowed from gross salary income. This deduction lowers the individual’s taxable salary income, lowering his or her tax burden as well. After being removed in fiscal year (FY) 2005-06, the standard deduction for salaried taxpayers was reintroduced from FY2018-19 onwards at Rs 40,000. The deduction ceiling was eventually increased to Rs 50,000 from FY2019-20. Given the recurrent cost of inflation over the years and the current living expenses of paid workers, the amount of deduction is relatively low. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, household spending has been negatively impacted by rising medical costs and work-from-home expenses such as furniture, energy, and the Internet. Thus, the present standard deduction ceiling of Rs 50,000 should be increased to at least Rs 75,000. Furthermore, taxpayers who choose the concessional optional regime under section 115BAC of the Income-tax Act, 1961 may be eligible for the standard deduction.
The need for deduction for higher education savings for children. Saving for a child’s higher education is an important financial objective for everyone, and most people set aside a percentage of their salary for this purpose. Except for the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana, which is specifically for a girl child, there is currently no express deduction or exemption for such funds. Because the deduction is combined within the section 80C limit of Rs 1.5 lakh per year, the tax benefits are likewise minimal. A separate deduction of at least Rs 1.5 lakh for education funds would be a welcome gesture in this direction. Alternatively, the deduction for education expenses (including tuition expenses) can be carved out of the section 80C deduction and a separate deduction may be considered. In short, such an increase in standard deductions and additional deductions for education costs will bring more savings for future purposes while providing incentives for individuals through tax savings.
