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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday led the celebrations marking 10 years of the Startup India programme, inaugurating a special Startup India exhibition at Bharat Mandapam and acknowledging the ecosystem that has propelled India into the front ranks of global entrepreneurship.
“This is a day to acknowledge the ecosystem of mentors, incubators, investors, academic institutions and others who support startups. Their support and insights go a long way in encouraging our youth as they innovate and contribute to growth,” the Prime Minister said while inaugurating the exhibition.
Young startup founders participating in the event credited Modi’s leadership and vision of building a “startup nation” for the rapid expansion of India’s entrepreneurial landscape. In video messages released on the occasion, entrepreneurs said initiatives such as Startup India, Digital India and wide-ranging ease-of-doing-business reforms have helped thousands of young Indians convert ideas into scalable enterprises.
They highlighted improved access to funding, mentorship and digital infrastructure as key enablers, and urged youth to move beyond the traditional job-seeker mindset and embrace entrepreneurship as job creators.
According to a government statement, India has emerged as the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, behind only the United States and China. From just four unicorns in 2014, India today has around 120–125 active unicorns with a combined valuation exceeding US$350 billion. By 2025, the country also ranked among the world’s most active IPO markets, reflecting the growing maturity of its startup landscape.
Officials said the success of Startup India lay not in isolated incentives, but in a structural overhaul of the startup lifecycle. Launched in 2016, the programme aimed to dismantle long-standing barriers at every stage—from idea and seed funding to scale, exit and reinvestment—through coordinated policy, capital and regulatory reforms.
To address early-stage funding constraints, the government introduced the Seed Fund Scheme in 2021 with a corpus of ₹ 945 crore. By 2025, 219 incubators across the country had been approved to deploy the fund, expanding innovation beyond a handful of major cities. Scale financing was strengthened through a ₹10,000-crore Fund of Funds for Startups, managed by SIDBI, which has channelled over ₹11,800 crore of government commitments via more than 150 alternative investment funds, collectively investing ₹22,900 crore in over 1,270 startups.
Entrepreneurs expressed confidence that with sustained policy support and active youth participation, India’s startup ecosystem would continue to drive innovation, employment and economic growth—cementing the country’s position as a global hub for entrepreneurship in the decade ahead.
