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The results of the third edition of Ranking of States on Support to Startup Ecosystems were released by Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, and Textiles yesterday at The Ashok Hotel, New Delhi. For the purposes of the ranking, states and union territories are classified into five categories, viz. best performers, top performers, leaders, aspiring leaders and emerging Start-up Ecosystems.
Gujarat and Karnataka emerged as the best performers in a category of States which included the NCT of Delhi. Meghalaya won the top honour among UTs and North-eastern (NE) States. While Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa and Telangana got the Top Performers award among states, Jammu & Kashmir emerged as the top performer among UTs and NE states.
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Assam, Punjab, Tamil Nādu, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh were adjudged the winners in the leaders’ category among states; Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh and Goa bagged the Leaders honour among the UTs and NE states. Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were declared Aspiring Leaders among the States. Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Daman and Diu, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, Puducherry and Tripura were the Aspiring Leaders from the UTs and NE states. Andhra Pradesh and Bihar from the States category and Mizoram and Ladakh from the UTs/NE States were clubbed under the Emerging Start-up Ecosystem.
Speaking after declaring the awards, Piyush Goyal said that ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) had the power to spawn thousands of start-ups. “The huge success that UPI has been in India, which has democratised the payment system in India. In the next 5 years, we will have ONDC democratise e-commerce across India. So much so that we will have a few thousand start-ups may be more and a few hundred unicorns. Rather than three companies being 100 billion or one trillion in size, you will have a thousand companies each of a billion-dollar. That is what ONDC has the power to do,” the Minister said.
He suggested that States could align with neighbouring ones so as to learn from each other. He also asked the department to get more start-ups on the Government E-Marketplace (GeM), saying that now even the services had been brought under GeM.
Shri Goyal suggested that there was a need to focus on developing a start-up ecosystem in districts with help of all the start-up-related schemes by the central and the state government. He emphasised the need to onboard and register more start-ups. He added that there was a great opportunity to democratise the start-up ecosystem in the same way as the Indian Premier League (IPL) democratised the cricket arena.
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has been conducting the States’ Start-up Ranking Exercise since 2018 to facilitate the ease of building a start-up and doing business across the country.
The States Startup Ranking 2021 highlighted the support being extended by over 30 states and union territories through startup policies to the ecosystem. There were only 4 states with startup policies prior to 2016. The state startup teams have been extending support across mentorship, incubation and funding. Moreover, feedback was gathered from more than 7,000 beneficiaries through surveys made in 13 different languages to grasp the real situation at the execution level.
