Highlighting the growth of the start-up ecosystem in the country, Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Thursday said India's unicorns have a faster average growth rate than that of the developed economies.
Speaking at a start-up conclave, Singh said the number of start-ups in India has grown to 70,000 from about 300 to 400 in 8 years from 2014 to 2022.
The Minister said, "India has the world's third-largest ecosystem in this area and in just eight to ten days a start-up takes the shape of a unicorn. He added that after a whopping 44 unicorns in 2021, the milestone of 100 unicorns was achieved a few days ago with a valuation of Rs 25 lakh crore."
"India's unicorns have a faster average growth rate than the likes of the US, UK, Germany and others," he stated.
Singh underlined the need for sustaining the start-up movement and urged the industry to become equal stakeholders in the rapidly rising sector. He also laid stress on the integration of start-up, research, academia, and industry for a win-win proposition for all.
Singh advised the budding start-up entrepreneurs to look beyond the IT, computer and communications sectors to the most unexplored and the richest farm sector, which is awaiting a huge tech revolution after the Green revolution.
Calling for promoting agri-tech start-ups in a big way, the Minister said, agriculture is one of the important pillars of the Indian economy as 54 per cent of the Indian population depends directly on agriculture and it accounts for around 20 per cent of GDP.
He said 'Kisan Drones' should be adopted in a big way for promoting crop assessment, digitisation of land records, spraying of insecticides, and nutrients and pointed out that countries like Israel, China and the US have transformed several agriculture practices in their country with the use of technology.
He noted that the dairy sector in India needs more and more success stories and called for innovative start-ups to take a lead and make India as the largest exporter of milk products. He said Australia has the biggest start-up projects in the dairy sector and Indian entrepreneurs should learn and incubate innovative practices.
( With inputs from ANI )
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