At the Startup Mahakumbh held in New Delhi this April, Union Minister Piyush Goyal called on India’s startup community to stop building “ice cream and grocery delivery apps” and instead focus on critical sectors like semiconductors, robotics, and deep tech.
Harsh? Perhaps. Necessary? Absolutely.
But Mr. Goyal’s statement isn’t just a critique of entrepreneurs, it’s a reflection of a deeper, systemic failure. Despite being a country of 1.4 billion, India is still struggling to produce meaningful innovation in foundational technologies. The issue isn’t lack of ambition among startups, it’s a lack of exposure, infrastructure, and institutional support.
India’s education system, even after the introduction of NEP 2020, remains entrenched in rote learning. Students are trained to crack exams – not to think critically, solve problems, or innovate. Coding is still being treated as a vocational addon rather than a creative tool. The NEP promised a shift toward critical thinking and interdisciplinary learning, but its curriculum updates are stuck in ideological disputes. State boards are misaligned. Structural changes remain pending.
Meanwhile, China has restructured its education system to serve national goals. Robotics and AI are introduced in middle school – not just as subjects, but as launchpads for innovation. They have invested in their educators, and built infrastructure to support early exposure to frontier technologies. By contrast, India struggles to equip even a fraction of its schools with functioning robotics labs or maker spaces. Deep tech requires experimentation and collaboration – luxuries often limited to elite institutions or metro cities.
India’s venture capital ecosystem rewards scale over science. Grocery delivery startups are easy to fund. Semiconductors demand years of research, skilled manpower, and infrastructure we currently lack. Even when young founders want to build in these spaces, they encounter overwhelming obstacles – limited IP protection, inadequate lab access, lack of mentors, and no manufacturing ecosystem to build upon.
We produce world-class talent and then lose it. To Stanford, MIT, Apple. Not because our students lack ambition, but because our domestic ecosystem lacks depth and support. If India truly wants to build the next Nvidia, reform must begin with education. We need real curriculum change, real investment in school labs, real teacher training, real university-industry collaboration, and real capital for long-term R&D.
Startups don’t emerge in a vacuum. They are shaped by the systems that birth them. If we want to see more innovation in semiconductors, robotics, or climate tech, we must enable it from the ground up. The future won’t be built by delivery apps – it will be built by creators. But only if we enable them.
Ankieta Kothari is a promoter at Pantheion Real Estate, driving forward a vision of sophisticated, sustainable, and user-centric urban development
