Meghalaya top performer in National Start-up Awards

Shillong: Meghalaya received the accolade of ‘Top Performer State’ at the National Start-up Awards, 2022 held as part of the National Start-up Day celebrations on January 16, 2024. Having secured the position of best performer for the previous year, the state continues on a sustained trajectory of developing its start-up ecosystem.“This success is a culmination of the chief minister’s vision and leadership. A few years ago, Meghalaya was faced with two contrasting circumstances. On one hand, the state was at the zenith of a demographic dividend with more than 72% of its population below the age of 35 and there was a dearth of employment-generating industries on the other. Being an entrepreneur himself, Conrad Sangma took a set of innovative steps to convert the state’s sizeable youth population into job creators instead of job seekers. He spearheaded efforts which materialized into the Meghalaya Start-up Policy 2018. It was introduced to make the state India’s leading start-up hub by 2023,” an official statement said.The statement added in pursuit of that target, the state government launched the PRIME (Promotion and Incubation of Market-driven Enterprises) program in 2020 to build a start-up ecosystem. It is a recurring annual event through which promising youngsters are selected to pitch start-up ideas in front of industry experts, successful entrepreneurs and government officials. The program currently supports about 500 entrepreneurs and more than 200 start-ups. Many of these have received seed funding and zero-interest scale-up loans.“As a precursor to the Top Performing State Award, Meghalaya was prominently featured as a ‘Focus State’ at the World Food India 2023 event held in New Delhi in November 2023.” the statement said.
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