“Today, with over 100 unicorn startups, the youth of India represent the country on the global stage,” Shah said at the third Sankalp Se Siddhi conference in Bangaloreorganized jointly by the Ministry of Culture and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
A number of reform initiatives have lifted India to 43rd in the Global Competitiveness Index from 71st in 2014-2015, he said.
He added that between 2014 and 2021, $440 billion worth of FDI entered India. “We have become the seventh investment destination in the world. In 2014 we were 142nd in the Ease of Doing Business ranking, and today we are 63rd.”
Focus on R&D
Shah urged the industry to prioritize research and development to achieve scale. “The industry of India should not think about increasing its speed, but about changing the scale, and if the scale is to be changed, then the emphasis should be on R&D.”
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Indian youth are the best brain for R&D and CII should make an effort to do R&D in India, he said, urging efforts to make sure nothing in the production chain, from raw materials to finished products, is produced outside of India.
