Gujarat and Karnataka have emerged as the Best Performers in a category of states including NCT of Delhi in developing the startup ecosystem for entrepreneurs. In the third edition of the States’ Startup Ranking 2021 rankings, released by the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT) on Monday, Meghalaya bagged the top honour among UTs and North-eastern (NE) states.
This is the third consecutive year that Gujarat has been recognised as the best performer
While Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa and Telangana were the Top Performers among states, Jammu & Kashmir emerged as the Top Performer among UTs and NE states. For the purposes of the ranking, states and UTs are classified into 5 categories – Best Performers, Top Performers, Leaders, Aspiring Leaders and Emerging Start-up Ecosystems.
Assam, Punjab, Tamil Nādu, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh were adjudged the winners in the Leaders category among states; Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh and Goa bagged the Leaders honour among the UTs and NE states.
Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal emphasised that Indian ecosystem could become the best in the work and suggested that states could align with neighbouring ones so as to learn from each other.
He also asked the department to get more start-ups on the Government E-Marketplace (GeM), saying that now even the Services had been brought under GeM. There was a great opportunity to democratize the start-up ecosystem in the same way as the Indian Premier League (IPL) democratized the cricket arena, the minister added
Taking note of India’s third position in the global startup ecosystem, Goyal questioned, “Why should we be satisfied becoming number three? We should aspire to be number one in the world.”
Further, presenting a case for India’s e-commerce initiative Open Network for Digital Commerce, the union minister said that ONDC had the power to spawn thousands of start-ups. “In the next 5 year, we will have ONDC democratize the e-commerce across India. So much so that we will have a few thousand start-ups may be more and a few hundred unicorns.”
Meanwhile, this year’s rankings were based on the period from October 1, 2019-July 31, 2021.
