Govt To Take Startup Ecosystem to Tier 2 & 3 Cities: IT Min Ashwini Vaishnaw At the 'Google for India' event, Vaishnaw stated that the centre plans to harness the multitude of talent coming out of smaller cities and towns for boosting startups
By Soumya Duggal •
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Next on the Indian government's agenda is to take the country's startup ecosystem to Tier 2 and 3 cities, according to minister of communications and electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw.
Speaking alongside Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the 8th edition of the company's annually held 'Google for India' event, Vaishnaw stated that the centre plans to harness the multitude of talent coming out of smaller cities and towns for boosting startups.
To that end, developing technology that encompasses all levels of Indian society will be key.
"The vision of Digital India over the last eight years has led to a very successful and scalable India Stack that even helped us manage Covid-19 through the Covin platform. We delivered over a billion vaccine doses and gave instantaneous certificates. Similarly, the UPI payment system has been phenomenally successful. We will keep on building similar systems for health, logistics etc. in the country," explained Vaishnaw.
Notably, the government's open network for digital commerce (ONDC) is another recent initiative in building public digital infrastructure for its citizens. The network aims to trigger a full-scale e-commerce revolution across the country and reaching millions of small traders hitherto left behind by ecomm platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart.
At the event, Pichai stated that the sophistication of the Indian startup ecosystem measurably improves each year he visits the country. "Under our India Digitisation Fund, we've focussed on increasing our investments towards Indian startups. We've also announced a $300 million fund, with a quarter of it going to startups led by women or focussed on bridging the gender divide," he said.
According to him, the real opportunity that startups in the country have is a possibility to scale across a market as large as India, akin to that enjoyed by, say, US startups, and lacked by, say, European startups where scaling across 26 markets proves challenging.
"There's no better time to build a startup in India than the present even though we are going through a macro-economic moment of crisis. Companies like Google too were created during downturns," said Pichai.
As per Vaishnaw, going forward, AI will play a big role in India's tech story, impacting multiple areas such as agriculture, linguistic diversity, credit accessibility, etc. "All this will ride on the success we've already had in payments and identity systems as well as rapid digitisation across geographies. Once we have the Data Protection, Telecom and Digital India bills in place, we'll work on harnessing technology for the benefit of the marginalised sections of society—the middle class and the poorer sections," he said.
India recently secured the first rank in AI talent concentration in the world, according to the Network Readiness Index 2022.
