India Now World's #155 In Ease Of Starting A Business

The World Bank today issued its Doing Business report, which has pushed India's ranking of Distance to Frontier to 131 from a revised rank of 134 in 2015.

Distance to Frontier score is an absolute score that measures the gap between India and the global best practice. India's absolute score improved from 53.93 to 55.27 in the previous year.

In a report on Ease of Doing Business 2017, the World Bank said India has embarked on an ambitious reform path.

The Indian government's initiatives towards helping entrepreneurs start a business jumped to 155 from 158 last year, according to the report.

This is crucial at a time when India is projecting itself as the top destination for startups and inviting companies worldwide to manufacture in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Make in India initiative in 2014 to facilitate investment, foster innovation and build manufacturing infrastructure.

The government's push to make India connected digitally has also given a push to many companies looking to start their businesses online. Customers in India are now willing to consume online and this could put India on the map among developed countries with respect to growth.

A report released by industry body NASSCOM on Wednesday ranked India as the third largest start-up base. The group projected startups in India to grow 2.2 times to reach 10,500 by 2020.

With increased interest in diverse fields such as Fintech, Healthtech, Edutech, data analytics and B2B commerce and artificial intelligence, India is set to witness high growth in new businesses.

The government, in a press release, said it was aiming to be bag top 50 rank in the report in the coming years with focus on implementing reforms.

Government's reforms including the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and GST could not make it to the World Bank's list of reforms to be assessed in deciding a country's ranking as these reforms were passed by the Centre post World Bank's cutoff of June 1.