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Under the recently launched ‘Start-up India, Stand Up’ initiative, the government is setting up a helpline for Entrepreneurs seeking funding, support or government assistance of any kind. Only this time, the helpline is Twitter and the service is called ‘Twitter Seva’.
The service will be launched on April 21 and will be a one-of-its-kind collaboration where a federal government will be officially using a social media site to help entrepreneurs all over India. Help will be given to one and all, from assisting in getting the start-up registered, acquiring clearances and approvals, information about tax benefits and incubation facilities, and applying for all the schemes under ‘Startup India, Standup India’ through the portal.
To ensure this initiative benefits all, a team of officials from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry will be positioned behind the scenes to help startups get connected to various stakeholders such as venture capitalists, incubation centers or iron out any issues with government clearances.
This is how the process will roll
The time Twitter Seva will be launched the process will be handled manually. Each tweet addressed to the ministry with a query will be scanned on a daily basis by the top officials, including the Union Minster for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman. These will then be segregated and sent to the relevant authorities who will revert with solutions.
Leveraging The Social Tool
Though it might seem a bit odd to some who aren’t on the microblogging site, the service is an indirect outcome of the vast followership the government has on Twitter. Twitter Seva is being modeled after the hugely successful use of Twitter by the Railway and Power Ministry to address the customer grievances and interact with common people. The government has also kept in mind that most of the entrepreneurs work online and use Twitter to promote their businesses.
According to ET, a government official said, “It is a very active grievance redressal mechanism through social media because most of the entrepreneurs that the ministry caters to are already online, so using Twitter to solve their problems makes sense.”
He added by saying, “Through this initiative with Twitter, a full blown software will be developed which will automate the whole process, working out a mechanism where grievances are automatically routed in real time to the concerned person, who works on it and feeds it back to the person.”
The portal will also be great platform for budding entrepreneurs to share their ideas with the government and seek help in implementing them, Under the Startup policy, the government has decided to take a slew of measure to promote entrepreneurship in the country but course correction is a critical part of the process, said a second official.
Credit – entrepreneur
