Around 82 per cent of start-ups in the nation are yet to get any benefit under the PM Modi led Centre's Startup India initiative, a report stated on Thursday. "Only 18 per cent start-ups and SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in the next poll claimed to have benefited from the Startup India Mission. This means that a huge 82 per cent start-ups or SMEs felt that they did not receive any benefit from the highly publicised scheme,” according to the LocalCircles Annual Startup Survey 2019. LocalCircles, a community social media platform held the survey among over 15,000 start-ups, SMEs and entrepreneurs in the nation.

Worth mention here the Startup India initiative was launched in January 2016 with a focus to support the growth of start-ups in the nation by providing incubation, funds and tax exemptions among other benefits.  In addition bringing the defiant stare back to the "angel tax" issue faced by start-ups, the survey displayed that about 32 per cent start-ups received several notices from the Income Tax Department in 2018.

The issue of tax notices to start-ups got public stare after a number of start-up founders took to social media after receiving tax notices. This led to the PM Modi led  government ordering the Income Tax (IT) Department on December 24 not to take coercive measures to make progress the outstanding angel-tax dues.