Key union ministers guests of honour at ET Startup Awards ceremony

Mumbai | New Delhi: Cabinet Ministers Piyush Goyal and Ashwini Vaishnaw, and Union minister of state Rajeev Chandrasekhar will be the guests of honour at a star-studded gathering in Bengaluru on Saturday to felicitate the winners of the country’s most prestigious awards for entrepreneurship, The Economic Times Startup Awards.

The grand ceremony on March 12 will see the most influential names in India’s new economy come together with policymakers, in the backdrop of what has been the most definitive year for the Indian startup ecosystem. India produced 46 unicorns, privately-held startups valued at $1 billion or more, in 2021 alone, as per a report by venture capital firm Orios Venture Partners.

Goyal, the Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Textiles and Food & Public Distribution, along with Vaishnaw, Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology and Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Electronics and Information Technology, will engage with the gathering on what the government can do to fuel the momentum further, and what role startups will play in the country’s vision of a $1 trillion digital economy.

Joining the ministers at the event will be Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.

Bengaluru remains the epicentre of India’s startup ecosystem. The city has been touted as the ‘Unicorn Hub’ with 18 startups out of the 46 that joined the coveted club in 2021 coming from the city, as per the Orios report. In all, Bengaluru houses 35 of the 90 Indian unicorns. It was also a landmark year for tech IPOs, with 11 Indian startups (including eight unicorns) raising $7.16 billion through public offerings, the report said.

The top technology and startup entrepreneurs may also get key updates on important upcoming legislations like the Personal Data Protection Bill, which directly impacts their business operations as well as government policies encouraging private sector participation in frontier areas such as space technology, development of drones among others. Discussions may also hover around the rise of home-grown companies in the areas of social media, deep tech, Metaverse or something as complex as additive manufacturing under the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission.

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Zomato was selected as the Startup of the Year 2021, joining a list of past winners that are all familiar household names. Other winners included Sanjeev Bikhchandani, cofounder, Info Edge, who bagged the Midas Touch Award for Best Investor while the Bootstrap Champ award was won by Kovai, a SaaS startup based in Coimbatore and London. The Top Innovator was Log 9 Materials while the award in the Comeback Kid category was won by Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar, cofounders of Ixigo. The startup adjudged as the Best on Campus was FamPay, while Lizzie Chapman, cofounder of ZestMoney, was the winner of the Woman Ahead prize and Genrobotic Innovations won in the Social Enterprise category for the use of robots in fostering deep and impactful social change. A special category introduced at the ET Startup Awards 2021, Covid-led Business Transformation, was awarded to Urban Company.