1 Lakh Startups and Counting: India’s Entrepreneurial Boom

According to Piyush Goyal, the minister of commerce and industry, India now has over 1 lakh startups registered under the Startup India initiative, who spoke at an event in New Delhi. Goyal emphasised the accomplishments of the Startup India initiative, noting that the number of startups in the country has increased significantly from 450 in 2016 to more than 1 lakh in 2023, as recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade.

India has the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world, the minister said in his speech. Earlier, Som Prakash, Minister of State in the Commerce Ministry, stated that the top three startup hubs in terms of registrations in 2022 were Maharashtra (4,801 registrations), Uttar Pradesh (2,572 registrations), and Delhi (2,567 registrations) in a written response to the Rajya Sabha during this year’s monsoon session. 

According to Prakash’s data, 26,522 new firms were registered in 2022 under the government’s Startup India initiative, an increase of 32.6% from the 19,989 startups registered in 2021. According to a different data provided by Rao Inderjeet Singh, MoS Corporate Affairs, the DPIIT has registered more than 3,000 fintech businesses. 

Other states’ startup bases also expanded last year, including those in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal. 

According to the India Tech semi-annual report 2023 by market intelligence platform Tracxn, however, the Indian startup ecosystem saw a 72% reduction in H1 2023 compared to H1 2022 due to the funding winter. The amount of funding in H1 2023 was approximately $5.5 billion, which is a considerable decrease from the $19.7 billion in H1 2022. In the first half of this year, $1.4 billion in early-stage capital rounds was deployed, a 44% decrease from the same period last year.