More Indians should invest in domestic startups: Amitabh Kant

New Delhi, Aug 15: More Indians should invest in domestic startups to sustain the growth of the Indian startup sector, India's G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant has said, noting that most countries across the world have high regard for India's economic growth and the Indian companies should get bigger.

In an exclusive conversation with ANI, Kant, a former CEO of Niti Aayog, said India has done well in terms of startups.

"We would now require a lot of Indians, Indian pension funds, insurance companies, all to invest in our own startups. Seventy per cent of the resources in our startup movement come from abroad. More and more Indians must invest in our own startup movement. That is the way forward. But we've done remarkably well as a startup nation," he said.

He said in terms of the startup ecosystem, India is placed third globally.

"We started with 356 startups. Today we have 1,40,000 startups. We have about 135 unicorns. We've created the third-best ecosystem in the world. The startup ecosystem would get a huge impetus from the abolition of the angel tax, which is now being done," he said.

"Most countries look at India as oasis of growth in the midst of a very barren economic landscape across the world. And most countries across the world have great regard for India's acceleration of economic growth. We need to see many more states as champions of growth, we need to see many more companies becoming big in India. We need to ensure that our micro-companies become small and our small become medium, and the medium companies go on to become big companies in India," he added.

Kant said the Production-Linked Incentive Scheme is also aimed at producing global champions in India.

"Some of the measures that we have taken, particularly the production incentive scheme, are aimed at producing global champions in India. Larger the companies we have, the more backwards-forward integrations we have with MSMEs", he said.

Kant praised the removal of the Angel Tax in this year's budget, which will benefit startups. He said India has shown remarkable growth prospects.

"India is the fastest-growing nation. We have grown at about 8.4 per cent which is remarkable and we will accelerate the pace of our growth as we go further. We want to become the third-largest economy in the world."

Referring to India's Vision 2047, Kant said "it requires a lot of us to work hard".

"Every Indian must get committed with a clear vision that we have to make India a developed country. Every Indian must not merely have the vision but also deliver and work hard on the ground. Every Indian must focus on improving education and health for several other Indians around him and every Indian must be a catalyst to India's big growth story of the next three to four decades."