North East emerging as new Start Up destination for youngsters: Dr Singh

With improvement in connectivity and transport facility in the last two years coupled with concentrated administrative focus, more and more youngsters are now heading towards the North-Eastern States to venture into entrepreneurship and take advantage of its unexplored potential, Minister for Development of North Eastern Region Jitendra Singh said. Addressing the two-day National Convention on "Transforming Northeast India" here on Sunday, Dr Singh said the region was fast emerging as the new "StartUp" destination for youngsters from all over India.

In an hour long interactive session with youth, Dr Singh pointed out to another area for future StartUps and said during the peak season of tourism when there was no accommodation available, even mediocre hotels charge exorbitant fares which were sometimes equal to 5-star hotel fares in a metropolitan city. However, he said, as the ‘home tourism’ trend has picked up, many youth were now making a fortune out of this hitherto unexplored avenue. He also referred to the new airports coming up at Pakyong in Sikkim, Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh and Shillong in Meghalaya, which along with a time-bound plan to lay broad-gauge rail track, would bring in more ease of business.

The Minister said another sector of entrepreneurship that was emerging was the medical and healthcare. For years, he said, there has been a trend for patients to shift outside the region, mostly to Kolkata or Vellore, but the encouragement given to the private corporate sector has now resulted in the opening of new hospitals within the region itself and young entrepreneurs were taking the lead. In this regard, he also referred to the initiative taken by DoNER Ministry to promote public-private partnership with some of the leading corporate players.

Stating that women in Northeast were already empowered and professionally more active as part of their tradition, the Minister pointed to the recent initiatives of encouraging Self Help Groups to promote household entrepreneurships, in which young StartUps have also come forward and opted to work in the sector of handloom and textile. Member of Parliament Vinay Sahasrabuddhe also addressed the convention.