Indian startups can look forward to an ‘India techade’
The last 9 years have seen a decisive transformation of India. The country’s political culture, governance, economy, confidence in its culture and heritage and more—the list is long—have been transformed. Coming after a decade of the United Progressive Alliance’s economic destruction, corruption, cronyism and appeasement, it has put India in the league of the world’s top five economies—a far cry from the “fragile five" among which India found itself at the end of the Congress-led coalition’s 10 years of power in 2014.
The economy, in particular, has undergone a deep qualitative and quantitative transformation. From one dominated by a few ‘groups,’ it is a rapidly expanding one that is seeing a broad spectrum of value-adders, ranging from legacy industry to startups and micro-entrepreneurs. India’s digital economy is a shining example of this rapid growth.
It was estimated to be about 4-5% of our GDP in 2014, is over 11% of GDP today and is expected to touch 20% of GDP by 2026. It is growing at 2.5 times GDP and startups are a big part of it. In 2012, I presented a report in Parliament that divulged around 98% of the Indian banking system’s net worth was lent to only nine business families in India, a concentration of capital that crowded out opportunities for young Indians and burdened the sector with non-performing assets.
A hostile environment for aspiring entrepreneurs has been transformed. Today, we can proudly say that startups have made India one of the world’s most vibrant innovation ecosystems. Indian startups in the direct-to-consumer (D2C), consumer internet, digital public infrastructure (DPI) and SaaS space have attracted record investments and seen 111 unicorns emerge.
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