Washington: India in the next 30 years will be in the top three countries in innovation and will drive global solutions for tomorrow due its entrepreneurial mindset, ongoing structural changes, move towards a formalised economy, expert on market competitiveness Amit Kapoor has said. Kapoor, who has authored NITI Aayog’s 2019 India Innovation Index, said certain factors already in motion will help India become an innovation hub.
“One is the structural changes that are happening in the system right now. India’s becoming more formalised as an economy, people are competing against a global system. That is going to drive a lot of change. “The second thing is that the Indian education or the entrepreneurial mindset. The entrepreneurial mindset in India is amazing,” he said. According to Kapoor, who is the chair of Institute for Competitiveness, India, the challenges that the Indian system provides propels one to become very innovative and find unique solutions.
“I’m convinced in my mind that India is going to be amongst the top two or three countries from an innovation perspective in the next 30 years,” Kapoor told PTI in an interview. Whatever happens in India today will actually get implemented or seen in a positive light by countries in say Africa, they will actually learn from it, he said. “What you’re seeing is that you’re creating solutions which are driven by very local, challenges and they are hugely scalable. So, India is going to be the driver of change in the future. It is not going to be any other countries,” said Kapoor. He said the cycle for innovation in India started in 1980s itself. In NITI Aayog’s Innovation Index all states are ranked on innovation and competitive parameters. Kapoor said the idea behind the index is to propel the country towards innovation.
“What sells here in the US need not necessarily be a big thing in India. You would have services which are localised for India. India will find its own mobility solution, will find its own service solutions for various things that are actually happening and that is what is going to happen,” he said. United States, he said, will always be one of the countries that will be driving innovation. “This is because of the technological focus that this country has actually had. The second would be the Scandinavian group of countries which will be driving innovation,” he said. He said China would also be part of the innovation future. “China is a more scaled economy. I do not really see China as a very innovative economy. In fact, whatever is happening in China, I see there’s a replication of lots of things that happen in the US,” he said.
| Startup ecosystem |
| India, which has seen a phenomenal growth of startups in the last decade, needs to address issues like liquidity and exits to propel its startup culture to the next level, a top Indian-American venture capitalists from the Silicon Valley has said. M R Rangaswami, a well-known philanthropist who over the last one decade has closely followed the evolution of India’s startup culture and has personally mentored a large number of them, said India was on the “right track”. “The main question mark in India’s startup system is exits. Everything else is driving (the startups).. venture capitalists are investing, angels are investing, companies are starting, customers are buying. The only thing is liquidity and exits, (which) haven’t happened at a pace that people would like them to be,” Rangaswami told PTI. |