The fundamental thinking of India has changed in the last 10 years and as a result the country has witnessed a mushrooming of a large number of start-ups across industry verticals, said Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw here on Friday.
Speaking at the G20 Digital Economy Ministers’ meeting the minister said, 10 years ago the country had only around 500 startups and today it has around 1,10,000 startups. “That is because our country has been witnessing an awakening of its innovative and development spirit, an urge to do something to find solutions to our problems. This new awakening has resulted in the formation of these startups.”
He said the day of technology transfer/import of technology was over for India as with a new thought process the country has a new confidence, new energy, new ability and new belief to do things ourselves instead of depending on imports.
“So our Prime Minister thought of developing our own train in 2017. The result was The Vande Bharat Express. When our startups in Bengaluru can develop trains for the world, why can it make for India?” he asked adding startups across the country have started creating solutions and made India products sector after sector, be it telecom, railways, automobile, or solar energy.
Commenting on the economic value created by the startup economy, Ullas Kamat, Chairman, FICCI-Karnataka said, “Startups in the country have raised over $130 billion between 2014 and 2022 and the current value of these investments is $450 billion. Our startups are truly propelling the country towards inclusivity and sustainable growth.”
Speaking on the occasion, Alkesh Kumar Sharma, Secretary, Meity said, the department under the Global Digital Innovation challenge received an overwhelming response to its call to create solutions/productions/innovations in the areas of agritech, edtech, healthtech, fintech, circular economy and secured digital infrastructure, from the global startup community. “We received some 5000 applications from diverse startups from across the globe, these were shortlisted to 123 and finally solutions/products/innovations ideas of 30 startups were chosen and recognised today,’‘ he added.
