Government’s Startup India flagship initiative has recognized 50,000 startups as on Thursday in a little over five-year period that have created 5.5 lakh jobs. The sectors that had the maximum registered startups are food processing, product development, application development, IT consulting and business support services.
“With the launch of the Startup India initiative, recognized startups have now spread across 623 districts. Each State and UT has at least one startup. 30 States and UTs have announced specific Startup policies to support startups. Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat have the greatest number of startups,” DPIIT said in a statement.
Startup India initiative was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 16 January, 2016 with an intention to catalyse startup culture and build a strong and inclusive ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in India. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry acts as the nodal department for the initiative.
DPIIT said it took only 180 days to add the last 10,000 startups, as compared to 808 days for the first 10,000 at the beginning of the initiative. “743 startups were recognized in 2016-2017, in the first year of the initiative, which has now increased exponentially to over 16,000 startups being recognized in the year 2020-2021,” it added.
“The leadership teams of 45% startups have a women entrepreneur, a trend which will inspire more women entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into startups,” the statement said. “Startup India at DPIIT has played a pivotal role in strengthening the key pillars identified for our startup economy. Funding opportunities to startups have been enhanced through the Fund of Funds Scheme with an overlay of ₹10,000 crore and the recently launched Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS) with an outlay of ₹945 crore,” DPIIT said.
