New Delhi: The results of the 3rd edition of Ranking of States on Support to Startup Ecosystems were released by Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal here on Monday, wherein Gujarat and Karnataka were adjudged as the best performers. For the purpose of the ranking, States and Union Territories are classified into five categories, namely, Best Performers, Top Performers, Leaders, Aspiring Leaders and Emerging Start-up Ecosystems.

The participants are evaluated across seven broad reform areas consisting of 26 Action Points ranging from Institutional Support, Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Access to Market, Incubation support, Funding Support, Mentorship Support to Capacity Building of Enablers. The exercise plays a crucial role in easing the business environment for start-ups in the country.

Gujarat and Karnataka emerged as the Best Performers in a category of States which included NCT of Delhi. Meghalaya won the top honour among UTs and North-eastern (NE) States. Maharashtra, which was classified in the ‘Leaders’ category in the 2020 Rankings, has improved its position and felicitated as a ‘Top Performer’ State along with Telangana, Kerala and Odisha.

With a network of more than 12,000 registered start-ups, Maharashtra has established a robust ecosystem for start-ups in the State. The State has been actively supporting start-ups in disruptive sectors by introducing and amending policies.  It formulated the Maharashtra State Innovative Start-up Policy in 2018 which has facilitated the development of the start-up ecosystem in Maharashtra.

The Policy aims to drive economic growth and job creation in the coming years by encouraging entrepreneurs to design novel solutions in new-age sectors such as Biotechnology, AI, Internet of Things (IoT), and Clean energy. The state’s Electric Vehicles Policy 2021, has been acknowledged as one of the key disruptive policy initiatives.

Goyal said the Indian Start-up ecosystem could become the best in the world. The Minister suggested that there was a need to focus on developing start-up ecosystems in districts with help of all the start-up related schemes by the central and the state government. He emphasized upon the need to onboard and register more start-ups and added that there was a great opportunity to democratize the start-up ecosystem in the same way as IPL has democratized the cricket arena.

Goyal further said that ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) had the power to spawn thousands of start-ups. “The huge success that UPI has had in India has democratised the payment system in India. In the next five years, we will have ONDC democratize e-commerce across India. So much so that we will have a few thousand start-ups, maybe more and a few hundred unicorns.  The minister appreciated the new mentorship program,” he said.

Anurag Jain, Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, said that a number of initiatives of the government including JAM (Jandhan, Aadhar, Mobile), Digital India, GatiShakti, Ease of Doing Business were driving the start-up ecosystem. /BI/