India home to over 100 unicorns, ranks 3rd in global startup ecosystem: Minister

India ranks third in the global Startup ecosystem and also in terms of the number of Unicorns. As per the latest data, there are currently 105 unicorns out of which 44 were born in 2021 and 19 in 2022.

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology, Jitendra Singh while delivering a keynote address at 'DST StartUp Utsav' at Dr Ambedkar International Centre, said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's special focus on Science, Technology and Innovation has fired the imagination of the youth in the country to innovate and solve problems with new ideas. He also pointed out that India's startups today are not limited to only metros or big cities and added that 49 per cent of the startups were from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. He said, we have startups emerging in the fields like IT, agriculture, aviation, education, energy, health and space sectors.

The minister said, India ranks third among the most attractive investment destinations for technology transactions in the world as it has a strong focus on science and technology. Singh said India is among the topmost countries in the world in the field of scientific research, positioned as one of the top five nations in the field for space exploration and also actively engaged in emerging technologies such as quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, etc.

The minister informed that India has created a massive jump in its global ranking of Global Innovation Index (GII) from 81st in the year 2015 to 46th in 2021 among 130 economies of the world.

India ranks 2nd among 34 lower middle-income economies and 1st among 10 Central and Southern Asian economies in terms of GII. The consistent improvement in the GII ranking is owing to the immense knowledge capital, the vibrant startup ecosystem, and some outstanding work done by the public and private research organisations, the Minister added.