The discussion on India’s innovation priorities has been rekindled by startup founders’ scathing responses to Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s remarks at the Startup Mahakumbh on April 3.
Goyal suggested that too many businesses were concentrating on food delivery and immediate logistics with no long-term economic impact, and he urged business owners to reconsider their value propositions. Instead of pushing limits in industries like semiconductors, robots, EVs, and battery technology—areas where Chinese companies are making strides, he added, many startups wind up using unemployed youngsters as cheap labor.
Not everyone missed his jab at “premier ice creams” and “instant grocery apps.” Zepto co-founder Aadit Palicha defended the contribution of consumer internet companies to innovation and job creation in a strongly worded post on X.
When comparing Indian consumer internet businesses to the advanced technological capabilities being developed in the US and China, it is simple to criticize them.Palicha put it in writing.
He listed Zepto’s financial contributions in numerical form: Since Zepto didn’t exist 3.5 years ago, there are currently around 1.5 lakh actual people making a living from the company. hundreds of millions invested in the organization of India’s backend supply chains (particularly for fresh fruits and vegetables), over a billion dollars in foreign direct investment, and more than 1,000 crores in taxes paid to the government annually. I genuinely don’t know of any other miracle in Indian ingenuity if that isn’t it.
In a criticism of Goyal, former CFO of Infosys Mohandas Pai said the minister should not disparage our businesses and questioned what the Commerce Ministry has done to encourage deep-tech endeavors. “There are a lot of deep-tech startups in India, but they lack the funding to expand quickly,” Pai stated, urging the government to provide assistance and cautioning that the Ministry’s startup division seemed to have given up.
In the meantime, Palicha clarified that the reason India currently does not have a domestic foundational AI model is that we have yet to establish impressive internet businesses. The best data, expertise, and funding are available to consumer internet companies, therefore they are the ones driving this innovation.
He urged capital owners, the government, and the ecosystem to support local internet champions instead of dismantling them. He promised to reinvest earnings into long-term innovation, saying, “If we ever want to get a piece of great technology revolutions, we need to build great local champions in the internet.”
