Several initiatives for start-ups such as easy procurement norms and faster exit policy, combined with huge market opportunity, makes India an ideal place for investment, said Amitabh Kant, Chief Executive Officer, NITI Aayog.

Addressing a venture capital symposium organised by NITI Aayog with French investors in New Delhi on Friday, Kant said start-ups that moved to the Silicon Valley and Singapore for growth opportunities are now moving to India.

Start-ups are already disrupting the health and education space through technological innovation and that is now only going to accelerate in the coming years.

With a market of 1.3 billion, Kant said there cannot be a bigger market than India for foreign investors. “This is where the future is,” he added.

Alexandre Ziegler, French Ambassador to India, agreed that India provides a huge market opportunity, especially in the space of technology and renewable energy space.

India-France partnership

There are over 1,000 French companies operating in India and Indo-French partnerships in research and development are growing as well. The French venture capital market is also growing and is playing a significant role in building start-up ecosystem in Europe. In India, he said, VCs will focus largely on deep technology that embrace AI, data analytics and speech recognition.

Special focus

Atul Chaturvedi, Additional Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce, said of the 20,000 start-ups in India, 5,400 are technology start-ups.

Also since 2016, when the Centre announced the Start-up India hub there is special focus on building the ecosystem in tier-II and tier-III cities as well.

Start-up ranking for States, which will be out in June-July, will further boost the ecosystem, he added.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW