STATE TIMES NEWS
NEW DELHI: “Fragile 5” to “Top 5”, its India’s “case study” journey of the last ten years, which could amuse and enthuse any student of Economics, said Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh.
From cynicism and scams of the past, the last decade under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been an opportunity to get over that dubious distinction, he said, adding, this marked the beginning of the journey from pessimism to optimism.
The Union Minister was addressing the Global Business Summit ‘The Big Shift – Measuring the Forces of Change’ organised by the Times Group.
Dr Jitendra said, in the last ten years under PM Narendra Modi’s leadership, India recorded a rapid rise across various global parameters and universal benchmarks.
Today India has emerged as the fifth largest economy in the world and in the Global Innovation Index we ranked 81 in 2014, we have jumped 41 places, today we are No. 40 in the world, he said.
Dr Singh said, India has the 3rd largest Startup Ecosystem globally and is home to the fastest-growing unicorns.
“From just over 350 StartUps in the year 2014,India grew over 300 times. After PM Modi gave the clarion call ‘StartUp India, Stand Up India’ from the ramparts of the Red Fort in his Independence Day address and rolled out the special StartUp scheme in 2016, today we have over 1,30,000 StartUps, besides more than 110 Unicorns,” he said.
Dr Jitendra said, even though talent was never lacking in the country, the missing link of enabling milieu was created under the leadership of PM Modi.
“Space reforms undertaken by PM Modi lifted the veil of secrecy that shrouded India’s Space programmes. With the opening up of the Space sector, the common masses have been able to witness the launch of the mega Space events like Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya,” he said.
Dr Singh said, four-five years back, we had just one StartUp in the Space sector, today we have around 190 private Space Startups after opening up of the sector, while the earlier ones of them have even turned entrepreneurs. There has been an investment of over Rs.1,000 crore by private Space Startups in the current financial year from April to December 2023, he said.