Indian Govt To Launch Unified Platform For Startups

To promote the startup ecosystem of the country, the government is now planning to launch Startup India Public Digital Platform to bring all government initiatives to one destination, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said recently. 

While speaking at a session by the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, Vaishnaw revealed the plan of a one-stop platform to further boost startups, Times of India reported.

In addition, the government is also opening up new vistas for the startups to collaborate with the government departments, he added. Taking for instance, the Indian army launched DefEx platforms with around 100 startups while Indian Railways and Indian Post had 150 and 80-90 startups respectively.

The Minister also noted that initiatives including Digital Health Mission would have support of 100 startups. While the government is currently offering open-source platforms for the systems to grow, it will have systems for several sectors such as education, agriculture, logistics, among others.

He is of the opinion that the purpose of any startup by definition is identifying a problem and offering a solution. Hence, all business ideas can not be termed as startups, he added.

As part of the Digital India Week 2022 celebration, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated a number of digital initiatives including ‘Digital India Bhashini’, ‘Digital India GENESIS’ and ‘Indiastack.global’ to boost the startups in the country.

With these initiatives, the government aims to enhance the accessibility of technology and streamlining service delivery as a boost to the startups.He also announced the first cohort of 30 institutions that would be supported under the Chips to Startup (C2S) Programme.

Although 2021 has been a golden year for startups in India, the startup ecosystem is going through a crisis due to economic downturn, funding winter. The total funding raised by Indian startups in the second quarter of 2022 has seen a significant drop of 42%, standing at $6.8 Bn funding, compared to $11.8 Bn in Q1 2021.

The situation has slightly improved in Q2 of 2022 as the funds raised by the startups in the quarter saw 1% year-on-year growth to reach $6.8 bn from $6.1 Bn raised in Q2 2021.