The Indian government’s Vision 2047 envisages turning India into a developed economy by the centenary of our Independence with a GDP of USD 30 trillion and a per-capita income of USD 18,000-20,000. One critical element for India to realise its ambitions is creating jobs. However, the capital-intensive model of development is not inherently labor-intensive, particularly in a post AI economy where robotic process automation is taking root.
Developing manufacturing sector to generate meaningful employment through Make in India, alone may not be sufficient to achieve the intended goal. This is where the role of government’s startup support programs that aim to spawn a million entrepreneurs in our entrepreneurial ecosystem comes in.
Incubators play a critical role in fostering entrepreneurship and nurturing tech start-ups by providing 'Start to Scale' support and taking ideas/research from labs to the market driving innovation and creating economic benefits. The Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), one of India’s earliest academia backed incubator birthed at IIT Bombay has been doing just that, by encouraging students, faculty members and alumni to become entrepreneurs, especially the students - turning them into job providers rather than simply job seekers.
As of June 2024, there were over 1,40,803 start-ups in India. The dual impact of incubators and the Government’s various startup support programmes is already beginning to show.
According to the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) data, Indian startups created over 1.5 million jobs since in 2016. Barring the pandemic years, when the growth rate slowed, start-up jobs have been growing at over 25% year-on-year (Y-o-Y). In 2023, start-ups provided 391,000 jobs as compared to 274,000 in 2022 – a 42% growth rate.
Even if one assumes that in the future, jobs provided by start-ups grow at a more modest 10% Y-o-Y, they could employ over 18 crore people in the next 25 years, genuinely emerging as India's growth engine!
(The author is a Professor-In-Charge, Society for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, IIT Bombay. Views personal.)
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