The government's efforts to nurture and nourish the startup ecosystem took shape in 2016 with the Startup India movement. Since there have been an exponential growth in the startups space.

Today, India has over 55,000 startups and is home to 34 unicorns. Nearly $63 billion has been invested into Indian startups in the past 5 years.

Speaking at Prarambh - Startup India International Summit, Sunil Kant Munjal, chairman of Hero Enterprise, said, "India is an amazing mine of opportunities right now. The opportunities lie in the ability of startups to meet the needs not just of the 100 million but to go down to the smaller tier III, tier IV towns and look at the local needs."

"Whether you look at education, logistics, healthcare, food and food delivery, the areas that you can address in this current environment are enormous. We are actually at a tipping point right now, this is where you will start to see IPOs, M&A's take place in companies. So, the shape and direction of many of these startups will now start to change."

John Chambers, founder & CEO of JC2 Ventures, said, "You want large companies to acquire these smaller companies because that is where you get good innovation and innovative ideas. I would say probably 65 percent will exit through M&A type of activity and I hope it will be as high as 35 percent through IPOs. I would look for the government of India to make that process easier and tweak the taxation system to attract capital as well."

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(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)

First Published:Jan 21, 2021 7:45 PM IST