Shimla: Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur promised to provide all possible assistance to the youth to develop entrepreneurship. Thakur, while flagging off the ‘startup Yatra’ van for the state, hoped that the Himachal Startup was poised turn the educated youth from job seekers to job providers.

The Startup Yatra would visit various educational institutions of Shimla, Solan, Sirmour, Hamirpur, Kangra, Chamba, Kullu, and Mandi districts. The Yatra would culminate at IIT, Mandi on 30th November.

The Chief Minister said Startup scheme is a gift of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the youth of the country which envisages various incentives for startups so as to enable the entrepreneurs to succeed in their ventures. This scheme would provide an opportunity to the youth to carry forward their innovative to next level where they could be transformed to reality.

He said that scheme also has provisions of creation of incubation centres in the host institutions in the state in order to build capacities, develop networking, establishing necessary infrastructure and generating awareness. IIT Mandi, NIT Hamirpur, Agriculture University Palampur, Science, Technology and Environment Council, Horticulture University Nauni, Bir Technology Park, HP University, CSIR Palampur and JPUIT Vaknaghat have been selected for incubation in the State.

Jai Ram Thakur said that basic objective of this scheme is to create self-employment and employment, upgrading the skills of entrepreneurs and to provide them support to set up their units under professional guidance. The scheme also aims at helping and holding entrepreneurs to select viable projects in the potential areas in manufacturing and service sectors and training them to set up startups and running them professionally.

He said that key focus areas of the scheme would be technology driven innovation sector, rural infrastructure and facilities, crafts, arts, water and sanitation, renewal energy, health care, clean tech, agriculture, horticulture and related areas, food processing, retail, tourism and hospitality, mobile, IT and bio-technology.