Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed Indian start-ups via video conferencing on Wednesday. “If we do not innovate we will stagnate. Our start-ups are growth engines. Today’s big companies were start-ups at some point,” he said.
However, “Design in India’ must be launched to boost ‘Start-Up India’, he reiterated. The start-up phenomenon is no longer restricted to big cities. Now smaller towns and villages are emerging as vibrant start-up centres, he said. Moreover, India has distinguished itself in the global start-up eco-system with company employing atleast 12 more people.
Innovation should become a culture in our schools, he said. To this end Atal Tinkering Labs have been launched in schools. These focus on students 6-12 grades and help them design solutions for the problems of their communities.
Highlights of the interaction are:
- Start-up programmes running in 28 states, 490 districts
- Enabling youth to be self-employed
- Founders of 45% start-ups are women
- To facilitate ideation and innovation the government’s has a fund of funds will will have a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore
- 21 regulations, six labour laws and 3 environment laws have been eased to facilitate start-ups
- Government’s procurement laws have been eased so that state authorities can buy from start-ups
- GeM, the government’s online marketplace, is now connected with the start-up portal
- Registered trademarks have increased from 68,000, before 2014, to 2.5 lakhs now and patents have more than doubled to 11,500
- Eight research parks in seven IITs and IISC Bengaluru have been set-up
He interacted with founders across the country starting with Bengaluru followed by Dehradun, Guwahati and Chhattisgarh. He then spoke to students from Thoothukudi, Goa and Amritsar.