Government initiatives is going to provide startups with massive opportunities for development in the
next few years, said Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Railways, Communications, Electronics and IT while
speaking at the ET Startup awards on Saturday last.
He flagged off five areas which will provide significant opportunities in the coming months, namely 5G, public digital platforms, railways, semi-conductors, and electronics and telecom manufacturing.
“We will see these five areas growing in the coming months. With the existing policies in place, we have
managed 80-90 unicorns and with the additional policy focus we expect to take this number to 500-600
startups in the future,” said Vaishnaw at the seventh edition of the awards show in Bengaluru.
Elaborating the opportunity in the 5G space, he said while the launch of 5G could not take off as planned
due to pricing issues, the government is encouraging research on a domestic 5G stack across core
network, radio network, testing ecosystem and standards.
“We have the 5g core ready. 4G is fully built,” he said pointing to the success of this initiative.
This virtualized 5G stack will provide opportunities for startups to offer solutions in autonomous
networks, throughput optimization, tower device interaction, call integrity, machine-to-machine
solutions, and IoT among others, he said.
In Railways, he said the government will roll out a technology challenge within the next month to invite
startups to participate in the digital transformation ecosystem of Indian railways. “We have received responses from 15-16 groups who have approached us with ideas for startups centered on semiconductors,” he stated elaborating on the opportunity in semiconductor manufacturing.
The fifth and final opportunity, he said, was in electronics and telecom manufacturing that is already
worth $75 billion which can grow to $250 billion in the next five years. He said 35 companies have availed the production linked incentives (PLI) for telecom equipment manufacturing that provides a huge ecosystem for designers who can provide solutions. “There are other opportunities in the EVs, block chain and many more technologies, but these are the five where I'm directly associated”, he said rounding up his speech.