Despite good ease of doing business rankings, running a business in India remains an ordeal

In 2015, Nakul Khanna left a cushy job at Google to focus on three of his start ups Instago, an aggregator app that lists taxi services, InstaClean, a laundry service, and another that makes customised T shirts. He tasted initial success when Instago had over 1,000 downloads in the first two weeks of its launch. Khanna, however, needed funds to improve the app and approached the Department of Science and Technology under the Union government, which, he heard, allowed a grant of Rs 15 lakh for start ups. After a year's wait, he was extended just Rs 75,000, which he politely refused. "It was a year wasted," says Khanna, now a student of business administration at the Kellogg School of Management in the US. "It is not just enough that the Indian government talks of funds. It needs to take action to dispense them." At Kellogg, Khanna, 26, believes he will be able to scale up his dream project with a $10,000 (around Rs 6.5 lakh) fellowship. While it's credible that India climbed 30 places to reach 100 in the Doing Business 2018 report the World Bank's latest ease of doing business rankings for 190 countries the fact is it's still cumbersome to set up and do business here. A plethora of clearances to set up and operate businesses can thwart the government's efforts to showcase India as a global manufacturing hub, discourage entrepreneurship and further widen the gulf in the jobs market. As per the rankings, it still