Entrepreneurship India

India ranked amongst the most friendly country for Entrepreneurs!

We have written numerous articles on this blog earlier, but all of them were about how environment in India is not conducive for entrepreneurship. But these survey findings are a bit of a surprise.

This was a startling news for me – India being one of the friendliest countries for Entrepreneurs and having some of the best cultures in the world for people to start a new business.

Survey Findings

The survey findings are based on poll taken by more than 24000 people in 24 countries.

Indonesia was voted as the most friendly country for entrepreneurs with over 85% saying that it is the most favourable country for innovation and creativity. 75% of people in USA & China thought same about their country. Indian came in at 4th with 67% of respondents felling the same.

India was also ranked 4th on the  entrepreneur-friendly index in the world with a score of 2.73. Indonesia ranked highest (2.81) on the index with US coming in at close 2nd. In Asian region all participating countries except Pakistan (2.35) ranked below the global average (2.49).

When it comes to starting a new business, most countries felt that there are barriers which could be removed to make the process easier. 72% Indian think that there are barriers, while in Indonesia 69% felt the same. However, more Chinese (76%) felt that it tougher to start a business in their country.

There are many other interesting findings which essentially show that India does have a good entrepreneurship culture. Check out the entire report pdf where you can find how India ranks on other parameters as well.

Software Piracy and India

Software Piracy causes USD 866 mln loss to Indian Govt.!

India is one of the leading countries in Software Piracy – Even today over 65% of Indians use pirated software on daily basis. Although, the rate of software piracy is coming down, it still is at a level where it causes Billions of dollars of losses to Software Manufacturers.

According to a recently released report by Business Software Alliance (BSA) , the commercial value of unlicensed software installed on personal computers in India touched USD 2.739 billion in 2010, whereas the global losses stood at USD 59 billion.

Now, some of you may be wondering – How does software piracy cause losses to Government ? It is basically in form of taxes which government pockets when a genuine software is sold – And taxes are quite steep for all software.

The BSA report pegs the losses caused due to pirated software to Government exchequer (in 2009) are US $866 million in net taxes, both indirect and direct.

Affects of Software Piracy in India

According to IDC estimates (in 2009), the software piracy in India caused:

• Loss of commercial value of unlicensed software totalled over US$2.27 billion causing the domestic economy to lose US$5.3 billion of software, services and channels revenues to software piracy.
• Consequently, the state exchequer tax receipts loss was roughly US$866 million at the current piracy and employment levels, as the industry lost its otherwise legitimate share of revenues to pirates.
• The indirect tax receipts would have contributed US$553 million from software (media and paper licenses) and services-related business transactions and direct tax receipts would be around US$313 million for the Indian economy.

The report goes on to suggest various measures that could be taken up to curb piracy in India, which includes amending laws to classify software piracy as a form of tax evasion.