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India should target 1 lakh startups in 5 years with a $75 bn valuation: NITI Aayog CEO

Joseph Sebastian & Neha Alawadhi

Moneycontrol News

The need to focus on innovation and improving the ease of doing business took centre stage at the 16th edition of Young Turks here in Delhi.

In a session titled “Startup India 2.0,” government and private stakeholders came together to discuss what ails and works in favour of the Indian startup ecosystem.

“Our target should be to have 100,000 startups in the next five years with a valuation of USD 75 billion,” said NITI Aayog chief executive Amitabh Kant, setting the stage for a discussion that included him, Karnataka’s IT minister Priyank Kharge, one of India’s IT services industry architects Pramod Bhasin, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion secretary Ramesh Abhishek, and Helion Ventures founder Sanjeev Aggarwal.

Taking the stage, Kharge spoke abut the initiatives Karnataka government has taken to help foster a vibrant startup ecosystem. “We have matured as an IT services economy. Now, the aim is to be thought leaders in new & emerging technologies,” he said.

He also spoke about the recently announced Elevate 100 programme to boost the startup ecosystem in the state. “As part of Elevate, Karnataka government will go to tier 2 and3 towns, curate 1,000 startups and elevate 100 of them,” he said.

Kant encouraged Indian startups to start building products not just for the domestic but foreign markets too. “The big bucks are out there. No country in the world has ever grown without exporting,” he said, adding that the important thing for startups is to have a sustainable of business model.

“Learn the art of scaling up,” he said.

Bhasin, a former chief executive of BPO firm Genpact, and president of TiE Delhi-NCR, enumerated some of the roadblocks that startups face in the country — red tape, too many check points, ease of shutting a company down, and long winded legal processes.

“The biggest challenge is the ease of doing business...there are many state governments which are doing better than central government (for startups),” DIPP's Abhishek said.

He added that the department was carving out a special place for startups on the government e-marketplace, which will provide for a more transparent regime.

Agarwal added that India is still an “unproven scale up nation”, and to build a real company it takes a decade. Therefore, it is good business to be long term investor in the country.

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/startup/india-should-target-1-lakh-startups-in-5-years-with-a-75-bn-valuation-niti-aayog-ceo-2324499.html