Startups backbone of country’s development: PM Modi

“I urge the startups of India to move towards the village as well. This is both an opportunity and a challenge,” he said, noting that rural and semi-urban areas were looking for a new wave of expansion, and improvement in last mile delivery of goods and services to such areas had led to growth in the talent pool in rural markets.

The Prime Minister noted that there were three key aspects to government efforts to strengthen the innovation, entrepreneurship and the startup ecosystem in India.

“First, to liberate entrepreneurship, innovation from the trap of government processes and bureaucratic silos. Second, to build institutional mechanisms to promote innovation. And third, to do the handholding of young innovators and young enterprises,” he said.

Modi noted that measures like removing problems of ‘angel tax’, simplification of tax procedures, permitting self-certification for certain labour and environment compliances and removal of over 25,000 compliances had helped strengthen the startup ecosystem.

He also highlighted that government efforts to boost the startup ecosystem had yielded results in terms of an increase in patent, trademark and copyright registrations.

“While 4,000 patents were sanctioned in the year 2013-14, last year more than 28,000 patents were granted. While in the year 2013-14, about 70,000 trademarks were registered, in 2021, more than 2.5 lakh trademarks have been registered,” the Prime Minister said, adding that the number of copyrights registered had increased to over 16,000 from 4,000 during the same period.

Government officials noted that Indian startups were witnessing greater investment interest. “The kind of interest which is being taken in the startup investment climate… In the last one year, annual investments into the startups have increased from USD 11 billion to USD 36 billion,” Anurag Jain, Secretary of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), said at the National Startup Awards event.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal called on startups to reach out to the government on how it could ease the regulatory burden on them further by making processes simpler.

Speaking at the National Startup Awards, he urged startups to develop content in Indic languages, encourage products and solutions with greater social and economic impact, promote startups in every district, create innovation zones and adopt best practices from across the globe.