As world moves into the knowledge economy, innovation has become the determinant of economic growth. Leading nations or societies clearly demonstrate that there is significant correlation with development of new technologies, new products and new intellectual property. Innovation has become a proxy for growth in the new economy. The importance to R&D and innovation is not a new realisation.
The Government was giving importance to R&D even in the past. Scientific ministries were leading the progress of science and R&D in the country. However, such effort was found wanting when it came to development of commercially viable products based on new technologies. Even though there was a progress at lab level, translation to industry remained a challenge.
Change in approach
The Startup India policy, which was launched by the Government of India in 2015, brought about a major change in the approach. For the first time, it was recognised that innovation is not only the preserve of big R&D labs, but startups with creative and disruptive thought processes can contribute to innovation in a big way. The launch of Startup India was indeed a watershed moment in the innovation journey. India was not the first to recognise the potential of startups. In fact, India was a little late in doing so.
– Ramayana
Israel, the Startup Nation, had been nurturing its startups for several decades and Silicon Valley got famous with startups becoming unicorns in short time. Interestingly, though India was not part of startup story of the world, many Indians had already reaped its benefit by contributing to the wave of innovation in Silicon Valley and other parts of the world. It was anecdotally said that often an Indian wanting to set up a startup would move to Singapore which had a favourable policy framework for startups.
Energy of innovation
The steps taken by Startup India have unleashed the energy of innovation in the Indian youth. Pentup ideas and opportunities combined with vibrant energies of youth; it was like floodgates had opened. However, startups required support which would help them to transform their fledgling idea into a robust innovative commercially attractive business. This required understanding of legal, financial, and business context in which these startups had to function. This need was fulfilled by Incubators.
IITs were among the first ones to recognise the need for setting up Incubator to nurture the nascent startups or even to provide a playfield where students and faculties could test their ideas whether they were worth pursuing. Later, Incubators came up in most educational institutions throughout the country. Many Incubators also got set up by private entities.
Incubators, accelerators
While the exact number of incubators in the country is not known, one could estimate that there are over 600 such incubators and accelerators. This implies that practically every second district in the country today has an incubator. The number of recognised startups has increased to 84,012 in 2022, up from 452 in 2016 and this number is continuously growing.
According to the Economic Survey 2022-23, favorable policy framework, investment incentives and easing business compliances are some of the reasons for this exponential growth. It is also true that the innovation wave was initially centred round cities of Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai, i.e., mostly in Southern India. According to a report by Nasscom, Bengaluru has third largest number of tech startups in all global cities, after Silicon Valley and London. North India lagged behind in comparison with Delhi-NCR as the main hub of innovation in this part of the country.
North India enveloped
The startup wave is now enveloping North India and region beyond Delhi are making a difference. A case in point is the impact that the Startup Incubation and Innovation Centre (SIIC) at IIT Kanpur has been able to create. IIT Kanpur was one of the pioneers in incubation when it set up a business incubator in 2000.
This was possibly the first startup incubator of its kind when it was started. However, the SIIC has really come of age during the last three to four years. There has been significant growth in the activities of SIIC. It has been successful in developing a innovation culture not only among students of IIT Kanpur but in other engineering colleges in the region.
