Govt will be facilitator for startups, not regulator: Piyush Goyal

The government will always act as a facilitator to strengthen the startup ecosystem and not act as a regulator, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday.

He said that stakeholders of this ecosystem will do self-regulation. Addressing the Startup20 summit here, the minister said, the message that should go out from here is the joint commitment of all the 22 nations, who have participated, that the governments will not be looking at impeding the progress of the work that startups are doing. The best way is to be out of the startups ecosystem, he said, adding the government is not expected to start regulating or dictating or micro-managing the ecosystem.

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“Our role will always be that of a facilitator and I do not see the government becoming an administrator or a regulator of this sector,” he said. He added that the job of the government is to give an initial push or early stage finance to budding entrepreneurs. The minister also said that India provides an unique opportunity to the world of startups. India has the advantage of skilled talent, affordability, growing startup culture, and aspirational population, Goyal said. He invited the startups of the world to come and explore opportunities in India.

The Startup20 Shikhar Summit, organized by the Startup20 Engagement Group under the India G20 Presidency, kicked off on Monday here. If at all there are issues, there are problems we would like to look at finding solutions to them through possibly self-regulation, he said, adding, “let them (startups) create their ecosystem that will ensure orderly growth, orderly way of accounting, way of financing, way of reporting,” Goyal said. “I would personally like to commit myself not to interfere in the startup world,” he said. Goyal also said that the kind of policy recommendations that have come from the deliberations here will lay the basic foundation for this startup journey moving up from “startup India to startup world”.

The Startup20 communique, he said, “can truly be the new dawn of global startup ecosystem”. The communique agreed by the Startup 20 group has urged the G20 leaders to raise the joint annual investment of G20 nations in the global startup ecosystem to USD 1 trillion by 2030. It has asked the leaders to facilitate the flow of public and private capital into the startup ecosystem by promoting various mechanisms such as Fund-of-Funds, Corporate Venture Funds, and University Endowment Funds. Startup20 India Chair and Mission Director Atal Innovation Mission, Niti Aayog, Chintan Vaishnav said that Saudi Arabia has committed to be the first partner in attaining this goal.

It has also called for considering the communique recommendations, policy directives, and actions in five areas for harmonizing the global startup ecosystem while retaining the autonomy of the national ecosystems. The main recommendation of this group include creation and adoption of a global definition framework for startups across G20 nations; setting up of an effective channels between the startup ecosystems across G20 nations; and building market access mechanisms for startups from G20 nations.