NEW DELHI: This is the high time when India should create indigenous sources to finance its start-ups, science and technology minister Jitendra Singh has said. Speaking at The New Indian Express Delhi Dialogues event, he said dependence on foreign investors for start-up funding leads to an outflow of money to other countries. He added that the country needs to find ways to not only fund its own businesses but overseas businesses too.
“Indian start-ups need to look for more indigenous sources to finance their businesses than depending upon foreign investors for funding. India has the potential to even fund foreign start-ups and the country has huge agricultural resources,” Singh opined when asked about the concerns raised by start-ups for removing the exemption of angel tax on foreign investors in the recently announced Budget 2023-24. He said start-ups need not hook on to IT as the country has a huge agricultural resource too and for agri-tech start-ups, angel tax on foreign investors is not much of relevance.
Singh said that there are apprehensions in many quarters about the start-up space where there is foreign investment as the global recession looms large over many countries. “Wherever I go, I emphasise the need for Indian resources, which are yet unexplored. We have a huge agritech start-up movement. I know we will be having the same scenario when we will be funding outsiders."
In addition, with regard to giving impetus to research and development in the country, Singh said, “Funding, enabling provisions, doing away with unnecessary formalities and alternative means of finding where private players come in are required to improve research and development in the country.”
With globalisation, Singh said in the times to come, this demarcation between foreign and domestic investors would also go away whether we like it or not, as the world has to grow and that too as one. “Now, even the scientific delegations which are coming to India are coming with the industry representatives, which was not seen even three years ago,” the minister stated.
He stressed the need for synergy between the public and private players from the day the start-up idea is conceived. On the recently launched Vaibhav Fellowship for the improvement of the research ecosystem in India, Singh said through this scheme Indian diaspora’s best of minds can collaborate with domestic minds to deliver world-class projects and products.