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Amitabh Kant Urges Young Entrepreneurs to Penetrate Global Market, Says No Shortage of Funds "Mobile will become your bank; it will become your wallet as the cost of physical banking will be very high."

By Aashika Jain

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Entrepreneur India

The Chief Executive Officer of Niti Aayog, the policy think tank of the Government of India, said India is seeing a stellar innovation, and for start-ups that are truly innovating, there is no shortage of funds.

"There is no shortage of funds. Funding in fact is 30 per cent higher and the Indian government is looking for is a great start up," he stressed.

Kant said the government has created fund of funds so that young entrepreneurs can have access to money from a vast pool of venture funds. "Once venture funds start supporting start-ups, the ecosystem of start-ups will grow and flourish," he said.

Speaking at the Entrepreneur India Annual Convention, 2017, Kant said the government has scrapped around 1,200 complex laws and procedures for easy registration of start-ups.

Kant emphasized that to create wealth in the country, entrepreneurship has to be promoted, but entrepreneurs must not aim at only the Indian market. Rather, they should look at penetrating the global space.

He counted the financial technology sector as one seeing highest disruption this year and said 280 million bank accounts have been opened since government's push to digitize banking.

Kant expressed optimism that this push for mobile banking and India's ability to use biometric will see the country moving towards using Aadhaar for banking purposes in the next 5-6 years.

"Mobile will become your bank; it will become your wallet as the cost of physical banking will be very high."

He said what this will open up is the possibility of debit card, credit card, ATMs and physical banks all going redundant in the next decade or and will push India towards massive disruption in the financial technology sector.

"One of the key consequences would be that India will become data rich before it becomes rich. Becoming data rich will enable for data analytics, which will ensure financial inclusion depending on financial history. Credit access for those with good credit score will become very critical. This will lead to financial inclusion and push change in a big way."

He is confident this digitization will improve the government-citizen interface greatly. He added that it is very important for micro, small and medium enterprises to adopt BHIM Aadhaar.

Kant who has been the driver of India's popular campaigns Make in India and Startup India said India has brought in bankruptcy law, which should enable failing startups to exit early.

Aashika Jain

Entrepreneur Staff

Former Associate Editor, Entrepreneur India

Journalist in the making since 2006! My fastest fingers have worked for India's business news channel CNBC-TV18, global news wire Thomson Reuters, the digital arm of India’s biggest newspaper The Economic Times and Entrepreneur India as the Digital Head. 
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