By Priyanka Sahay
Mint, New Delhi
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Globalization was a major focus at the recent Startup Expo in India where leaders in business urged entrepreneurs to focus on the global market when starting and growing their businesses. For women in business with an eye on e-commerce, consider this statistic, by 2023, India will be a $300 billion e-commerce market. Can someone say OPPORTUNITY!!!!!
NEW DELHI
Indian entrepreneurs need to build products and services keeping the global market in mind, said Amitabh Kant, chief executive officer of NITI Aayog on Saturday.
“We are in a globalized world. Whatever you do you are an integral part of the global supply chain. Whatever you produce think big in terms of the world. No company in the world whether it is Uber or Airbnb have ever succeeded thinking only of one country,” said Kant while speaking at the Startup Expo event in Gurugram organized by the German carrier Lufthansa and the Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).
Kant also said that India does not want to be like China which limits the market for other foreign firms as it would hinder innovation.
“Government should not interfere in businesses. Just create a better model and beat them (foreign firms) in India. We don’t want to do what the Chinese did, the Chinese closed the market for everyone. We are a developing economy, the more we open up, we will be more and more innovative,” he said.
Before joining NITI Aayog, Kant was the secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). He was one of the key members behind the Startup India initiative announced by the prime minister in January.
Kant also asserted that digitization is the way forward. He said that by 2023, the brick and mortal business in India will be dead and everything will be done online.
“In the last five months we have given 23 payment bank licenses. Many of these are telecom companies. What will happen is that the brick and mortal will go dead, it will all be mobile telephony transactions. Today we have 350 million people using internet. By 2023 end we will have a billion people using smartphones and on Internet. There will be billion Indians with access to the Internet, biometric and using smartphones. We will be able to radically alter the world in terms of technology,” he said.
By 2023, India will be a $300 billion e-commerce market, said Kant.
The government has been laying emphasis on the growth of the startups ecosystem in the country.
During the Startup India initiative, the prime minister announced several measures to boost the growth of Indian startups, investors and entrepreneurs including a Rs.10,000-crore fund to be deployed over the next four years, exemptions from capital gains tax on investments, favourable labour policies, faster and cheaper patent applications and easy registration for new firms.
Startups present a rare bright spot in an economy that has expanded at a disappointing pace over the past three years and one in which private investment still hasn’t picked up.
The government too is thus keen to promote the growth of startups in a move to boost its own image. However it is still to be seen whether the measures announced by the government amount to much.
According to a October report by industry lobby Nasscom, India ranks third among global startup ecosystems with more than 4,200 new-age companies, behind only the US and the UK.
