Startup India was launched in January 2016 with an ambitious promise: India would stop waiting for technological futures to arrive from elsewhere and begin producing them at scale. The aversion to risk-taking and failure would be reimagined as part of innovation.
Ten years later, the headlines are impressive: over two lakh recognised startups, more than 125 unicorns – as startups valued at over $1 billion are known – and India’s position as the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, says a government press release.
Startup India has also reshaped the collective imagination of techno-futures: the Indian version of the US television show, Shark Tank, entered its fifth season while tech entrepreneurs are being described as “wealth creators”.
But it is harder to explain what has not emerged.
India has not produced a transformative technology that reshapes global markets on its own terms. Most unicorn startups remain unprofitable. Most patents, filed to impress investors, were rejected in the first round.
Much-hyped Digital Public Infrastructures, such as the UPI payment system, continue to rely on state subsidies, with limited global uptake. Despite the scale of talent, data and users, India remains peripheral to frontier AI development. The standard explanation is that India is still “catching up”.
But if Startup India’s goal was to catch up with venture capitalism’s model of futurity as...
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