India’s largest Bank, State Bank of India, today inaugurated India’s first startup focused Bank Branch in city of Bangalore. This specialized branch aims to understand and address banking needs of a Startup Business.
The first SBI InCube Branch has come up on St. Mark;s Road in Bengaluru.
The launch comes just 2 days prior to the big “Startup India, Standup India” event organized by the Government, where the much awaited Start-up policy is expected to be announced.
Why Startup Focused Bank Branch?
When an entrepreneur starts his own business, especially for the first time, he is quite blank about statutory requirements, or issues related to taxation, Forex remittances issues and so on. The SBI InCube branches will have experienced and dedicated relationship managers will will offer solutions to various Entrepreneurial needs.
Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairman of SBI said, “Basically, this is a place where they (entrepreneurs) can come and discuss what are the requirements needed for setting up a company, get their current accounts opened, and help them understand concepts like a company’s articles of association,”
The branch will help Entrepreneurs on various fronts and will offer them advisory services on things like:
- What registrations/approvals are needed to start a business
- What tax considerations should be kept in mind
- Do they need CIN/TIN/TAN etc
- How to manage startup finances and funds
The relationship manager will also help startup entrepreneurs on Forex remittances incase Startups get funding from foreign entities etc.
The SBI InCube initiative was designed and conceptualized based on the feedback given by Top technocrats and investors like Nandan Nilekani and TV Mohandas Pai.
While Startup InCube will help in all these areas, they will not offer startups loans to setup a business as startups don’t qualify for commercial Bank loans.
More details about the SBI InCube Bank branch are available on their website.
With Government pushing Startup culture in India ( They are even talking about eliminating Startup Taxes), Entrepreneurship is now taking centrestate. More first time Entrepreneurs are starting their Businesses right now than any other time in history.
With Venture Capitalists, Angels, Accelerators, Government themselves and now even banks jumping in to help the Entrepreneurs, we are now very much on the path of becoming the next Startup Capital of the world.
