Piyush Goyal chairs roundtable with 40 unicorns

Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal chaired a unicorn roundtable with 40 participants as part of the Startup India Innovation Week, to celebrate their growth and bring them together for supporting more unicorns in the nation.

As part of the Startup Innovation Week, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) also launched a three-month accelerator program to provide early-stage startups with access to knowledge, network, funds, and mentorship, the government said.

Goyal, in the unicorn roundtable, emphasised on the importance of streamlining investments in Tier 2 and 3 cities, as well as for them to come together and form a ‘unicorn club’ that would solve for access to capital for startups. The names of the startups were not mentioned in the communique.

‘StartupShala’, the accelerator program by Startup India will have each cohort of the program focused on a particular sector. Notably, the first cohort will be focused on CleanTech.

Out of the applications received through the call for applications, 20 startups would be selected per cohort. 

The Startup India Innovation Week from January 10 to 18 saw over 75 physical events, from workshops empowering women entrepreneurs to incubator trainings. Several roundtables were conducted in different cities comprising of stakeholder discussions and partnerships for the startup ecosystem.

A one-to-one mentorship of startups with corporates such as HCL, HSBC India, Qualcomm India Private Limited, and TCS Foundation was also launched earlier in the week. 

A virtual panel discussion was also conducted with global partners of Startup India, including incubation, funding and financial assistance, as well as the public private partnership model, market access and government infrastructure.

Workshops were also conducted in Mumbai and Hyderabad. While the former was to sensitise startups on the benefits available to them on Government e-Marketplace (GeM), the latter at the University of Hyderabad in Telangana saw participation from over 70 entrepreneurs.