Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh today said that the successful launch of Chandrayaan-3 has sparked global aspirations in Indian students.Dr Jitendra Singh said, this is all the more evident that after the opening up of the Space sector by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June 2020, the number of Space Startups sky-rocketed from merely 04 to 150 Startups and most of them being led by science students, researchers and entrepreneurs.
Dr Jitendra Singh was addressing the gathering after inaugurating the Science 20 (S20) Conference under the aegis of G20 on the topic “Disruptive Science for Innovative and Sustainable Development”, at Amity University, Noida on yesterday. Jitendra Singh said, Startups are centres of novel innovations and essential for the growth of the nation and driven by the ideas of the Prime Minister Modi, Startup India, Standup India and Make in India will help transform India to even stronger economic power and contribute towards adding 1 trillion USD to our GDP each year. “They generate jobs leading to a stronger and healthier economy. Start-ups encourage a pragmatic approach at the academic establishments further leading to large scale employment generation. It motivates students or researchers to put their ideas into practice by collaborating with the start-up, which more importantly help to develop means of economic expansion. India now stands 3rd in terms of Startup ecosystem with almost 110 Unicorns,” he said, encouraging the universities to promote students’ tie-ups with the emerging Startups. Dr Jitendra Singh said that there were just around 350 Startups before 2014, but after PM Modi gave the clarion call from the ramparts of the Red Fort in his Independence Day address and rolled out special Startup scheme in 2016, there has been a quantum jump with over 1.25 lakh Startups now and more than 110 Unicorns. Similarly, he added that in the Biotech sector, from 50 odd Startups in 2014, we now have 6,000 Biotech Startups.
