Union Minister Piyush Goyal urges Indian startups to dream bigger, seek deeptech ambitions

"Are we going to be happy being delivery boys and girls?" Union Minister Piyush Goyal said, as he urged startups to think bigger and aspire beyond quick commerce, gaming and influencer economy.

Goyal was referring to a slide making rounds of social media that draws a comparison between Chinese startups that are working in EV, semiconductor, robotics and deeptech space.

"We have to be willing to evolve, we have to be willing to learn. We have to aspire to be bigger and better, then we have to be bolder and we should not shy from the competition," Goyal said at the second edition of Startup Mahakumbh, touted as the world’s largest startup gathering, in New Delhi.

At the second day of Startup Mahakumbh, Goyal went on to call out new age startups that are coming up with healthier alternatives for ready to eat food like ice-creams cookies, touting them as businesses and entrepreneurship instead of startups.

While, Goyal praised the success of instant grocery delivery startups vying for multi-billion listing on bourses, he criticised their priorities of using the nation's resources to develop hyper-fast logistics as against Chinese startups working on robotics and automation to create more efficient factories.

"While wealth creation in the short run may happen with some of these conveniences, do we want to be just a shopkeeper, or do we want to create something at global scale? This is the choice startups have," he added.

At the Bharat Mandapam in Delhi, Goyal called out the startup ecosystem for fostering just about 1,000 deeptech startups, seeing it as a disturbing sign for growth. He called on startups to have global ambitions, challenge their own limitations and not shy away from global competition.

The conversation also bought on comments and criticism from the startup community. "We have a hostile Finance Minster Nirmala Sitharaman, who harassed start ups on the angel tax for many years, (does) not allow endowments to invest. Insurance companies still do not invest whereas they do globally. The RBI regularly harasses overseas investors on remittances and AIFs, treats them badly, (because of) FE rules," T.V. Mohandas Pai, former Infosys board member and Aarin Capital Co-founder said in a post on X.