Indian financing must drive startup movement, can't depend on foreign funds: Kant

The Indian startup movement must be driven by Indian financing and cannot depend on foreign funding, G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said on Thursday.While speaking at a CII Unicorn Summit, Kant said the nation needs to create a fund of funds to support young deep tech startups.

The Indian startup movement must be driven by Indian financing and cannot depend on foreign funding, G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said on Thursday.

While speaking at a CII Unicorn Summit, Kant said the nation needs to create a fund of funds to support young deep tech startups. All upcoming startups have to be driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI), he said.

Startups should focus on corporate governance for growth, otherwise, they will land up in a debacle, the former NITI Aayog CEO said.

''In the quest for great innovation and disruption, startups lose out on corporate governance. The key to India’s success of becoming the number one nation of startups is our ability to do good corporate governance and to ensure that Indian insurance companies, pension funds, and others, should all invest in our startup movement,'' he said.

Kant added that India cannot grow on the back of foreign money coming in all the time.

''India’s startup movement must be driven by India’s financing,” he said.

''We must be very clear about being the number one startup nation in the world..There is no reason that anything should hold us back because we have created a digital movement that is more powerful than anything else in the world.

He also said women are outperforming men in every walk of life, and if India wants to be a USD 35 trillion economy by 2047, it cannot do so without women's participation.