SINCE the launch of the Startup India initiative in 2016, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has recognised 92,683 entities as startups as on February 28, 2023, according to the Government data presented in Parliament.
Sharing this information in a written reply in the Lok Sabha last month, Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Som Parkash gave a five years’ break-up for the number of such entities.
While in 2018, this number was 8,635, it went up in the next consecutive years to 11,279 (2019), 14,498 (2020), and 20,046 (2021). In 2022, the number of recognised startups stood at 26,542.
Recognised startups
In a separate answer in the Upper House of Parliament during the monsoon session of Parliament last year, the minister had announced that there were only 471 recognised startups in 2016.
According to ZinnovNasscom India Tech Start-Up Landscape Report 2022, “The India Startup ecosystem has been an unstoppable freight train, having produced 25,000 to 27,000 startups in the last decade alone. The tracks firmly laid through corporate participation in the form of investments, acquisitions, and open innovation programmes, Government support, and the momentum being fuelled by founders and funders alike.”
In his answer to a specific question on the “percentage of success” of startups, Som Parkash told the Lower House in April, “The regular businesses are often measured by success or failure in a specific number of years of operation, whereas, the startups and scale-ups (established startups) are more accurately measured by failure or success in a particular phase making it difficult to put together a statistic covering all types of new businesses and their failure rate with any level of accuracy. Therefore, the information with respect to the success or failure of startups is not centrally maintained by the Government.”
23 emerge as unicorns
However, despite a pervasively brittle global economic scenario, and a slowdown in funding, Indian startups have managed to bring in steady investments and 23 of them have emerged as unicorns in 2022 alone, added the ZinnovNasscom report released in midFebruary.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has himself said that “startups are going to be the backbone of New India” and even formally designated a “national startup day”. Now, January 16 is celebrated as National Startup Day every year in the country after the PM’s announcement last year. The aim is to assist the startup tradition to percolate to grassroot levels.
