Amit Shah, the Union Minister for Home & Cooperation, encouraged businesses on Thursday to support startups completely in light of their connections to the sector. Since 2014, when the nation had just one unicorn—a business valued at $1 billion or more—startups have advanced significantly.
Addressing the third edition of the ‘Sankalp Se Siddhi’ conference at Bangalore today, Shah said, “Capital could be an issue but you can promote R&D through a consortium. Indians are considered to be the best brain for R&D in the world and CII should make efforts for it to do R&D in India. The industry should also back up startups because there is a kind of linkage between the industry and the startup.”
He further added, “Today with over 100 unicorn startups, the youth of India are representing the country on the global stage. We have become the world’s 7th favourite destination for investment. We were at number 142 in the Ease of Doing Business rankings in 2014; today we are at number 63.”
The Sankalp to Siddhi conference is a convention to plan from this ‘AmritVarsh’ to the Centenary year. The 75-100-year span of India’s independence has been alluded to as AmritKaal by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After the country gained its freedom in 1947, 17 Lok Sabha elections were held, 22 governments were chosen, and 15 Prime Ministers were in office. All of these events aided the development of the country.
The Union Home Minister believes that the CII should act as a hub for R&D. Instead of focusing on accelerating pace, India’s industry should alter dimension. If magnitude is to shift, R&D must be given priority. He claimed that young people in India had the best minds for research and development and that the CII should work to undertake research in India.
“CII should identify things. This should be done by industry now and that can only happen when CII becomes a platform instead of just representing issues. CII should come up with some concrete proposals to solve problems,” he said. “We need to move forward by paying special attention to defence, energy, and how to be a cost-friendly industry and manufacturing hub.”, he said in his speech.
The GDP growth rate for the country in 2022, according to the Home Minister, will be somewhere around 7.4%, which is much greater as compared to several wealthy nations. This proves how our initiatives have indeed been successful and are having an impact. India has attracted $440 billion in FDI between 2014 and 2021, ranking the nation the sixth most popular location for foreign direct investment.