The Startup India initiative is envisioned to catalyse the start-up culture, with start-ups being recognized through the initiative and entrepreneurs availing the benefits of launching and conducting their own business in India with ease. In recent years, India has seen a steady increase in the number of start-ups incorporated, especially in sectors such as IT and ITES. The annual growth rate of start-ups as of early 2022 was around 15.5 percent. The number of registered start-ups grew from 223 in August 2016 to more than 83000 in December 2022. Several policy changes and new schemes have been introduced by 129 different ministries, to encourage and support start-ups. Government’s support is critical in providing the essential funding, mentorship, and market access support required by start-ups. In line with the same, MEITY’s start-up support programs contain various provisions to incentivise key start-up stakeholders such as incubators and institutions of higher education among others so as to promote holistic development for India’s start-up ecosystem. The objective of this study is to analyse the start-up landscape and understand the impact of the Start-up policy introduced by the National Government in 2016, with a specific focus on start-ups in digital technologies.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of Private Equity (PE) financing in the infrastructure and real estate sectors. In doing so, it analyzes the effects of such investments in the two sectors, evaluates the types of financing strategies, and explores the value created by such investments. Infrastructure and Real Estate have emerged as a significant asset class for PE investors. In the last three decades, PE firms have invested significant amounts of capital in infrastructure and real estate – sectors which did not feature in their radar until recently. Between 2000 and 2009, PE firms invested about USD 203 billion in infrastructure and similarly placed figures in real estate. Fundraising for infrastructure and real estate was about USD 98 billion and USD 151 billion in 2019, setting new records and reaching all-time highs. This book examines such PE investments – both at a global level and at an emerging economy level, to identify how PE firms have created an impact with their investments, to provide both ready capital and value-addition to sectors which seem to urgently need both. The book is being published by Springer.

A typical valuation procedure of a startup involves an analysis of potential future cash flows, an analysis of comparative firms’ stock prices, or an analysis of the price-to-earnings ratio of the venture. The valuation of a new venture with significant growth opportunities, high uncertainty and no real cashflow using foggy discount rate estimations seem to defy all the common wisdom on growth firm valuation. Rather than anchoring the Risk-Return equation of such high-growth, high-uncertainty firms in some impassable plan, the study intends to conduct an empirical analysis of the risk and return profile of start-ups in the Indian scenario using a risk-neutral model and backing it up with the findings of the cascade neural network model. This would provide a systematic reference guide for entrepreneurs as well as risk capital investors in India.

Health Equity is the absence of unfair, avoidable, or remediable differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically, or geographically or by other dimensions of inequality (e.g., sex, gender, ethnicity, disability, or sexual orientation). It also requires attention to health inequities, which are differences in population health status and mortality rates that are systemic, patterned, unjust, and actionable, as opposed to random or caused by those who become ill. Health equity is an issue within all our countries and is affected significantly by the global economic and political system. Startups have unique capabilities such as revenue generation, poverty elevation, and strengthening the local economy, etc. that can help them achieve health equity. This proposed research focuses on how these startups and entrepreneurship can contribute to health equity and address inequities in health.