Goyal’s start-up comment draws mixed reactions from entrepreneurs
BENGALURU: Many start-up founders including Ashneer Grover, Aadit Palicha and Anupam Mittal have slammed Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal's comments after he questioned start-ups' direction and focus. At Startup Mahakumbh 2025, Goyal said the start-up community should focus more on the tech sector as compared to grocery delivery.
Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal said, “From AI & space-tech to material science, Indian entrepreneurs are ready to take on the world. But capital, the eco-system for growth, and commercialisation are severely lacking. Founders can do most things but not everything.”
However, a few founders and investors agreed with Goyal’s statement. Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal said he fully agrees with the minister's statement. In a post on X, he said, "Our startup community needs to introspect as to why we’re just building consumer tech companies. Entrepreneurs need to reflect and instead of building lifestyle apps, build innovation and future tech."
Ganesh Mahadevan, Partner, thinksynq consulting said it's time for Indian start-ups to confront the elephant in the room. "We've been operating in a vacuum, without clear answers to fundamental questions: What is the role of start-ups in our ecosystem? Should they be solving the same problems as established players, or tackling new challenges? And what space do they occupy in our economic landscape?" He said it's time for policy makers to step up and provide clarity.
Goyal had pointed out that many start-ups are focusing on food delivery, whereas, Chinese start-ups are working on EVs, semiconductors and AI.
Former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai wrote in a post on X that deep tech start-ups are small due to lack of capital because funding is less.
Dr. Partha Chatterjee, Dean of Academics and Professor of Economics, Shiv Nadar University, said that it would be wrong to put the blame squarely on the entrepreneurs in India without acknowledging the structural differences.
"The share of consumption in GDP in India is greater than that in China. In contrast, India manufactures and exports far less than China. So, it is not surprising that many entrepreneurs are attracted to look at business innovations in the space where they can tap into consumer expenditure directly, like food and grocery delivery.”
He also stated that there is a huge gap in the education and research sectors in these two countries. China has invested heavily in building up a significant number of world class research universities. These universities not only provide the backbone of research that helps entrepreneurs use deep tech to build businesses, but they also produce a high-quality workforce that these entrepreneurs can use. “ In India, on the other hand, the education system is shallow and there is a paucity of skilled workforce,” he said.
However, significant opportunity lies in certain areas that involve energy transition, space tech, food and biotech, data, and AI applications that the entrepreneurs in India can take advantage of with some perseverance, he added.
Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, said the founders built businesses around an idea they are comfortable with and many have succeeded. "As far as Deeptech is concerned, we didn’t have patient capital earlier as well as infrastructure, however now there are investors who are investing in long product development cycle ventures, Unicorn has done quite a few of such investments . One thing which we feel start-ups should look at is building world class products so that they not only see success in India but also see takers in the international market.