While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been promoting 'Make in India' that train has move out and gone to China a long time ago, said Saurabh Srivastava, co-founder and former Chairman of NASSCOM and director Indian Angel Network (IAN). He said that India needs to focus on 'Design in India' instead.

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Speaking at the Indian School of Design and Innovation (ISDI) he said that China had taken the train for manufacturing during the time when we were moving towards globalisation. “This was a time when everyone was embracing globalisation. Now we are moving towards de-globalisation. We can already see this with Brexit and Donald Trump's speeches in the US.”

Srivastava said that it is for this reason that Indian start-ups need to design their own products and not just replicate solutions from other developed countries here. With start-ups coming up with solutions only for India they will able to survive even if the country is to itself as we have scale.

“Too many of our start-ups are coming up with “me-to” solutions. These are ideas which are from other countries and replicated in India. This is a problem. It may work for some time but not for long. They have to realise that India is an open market. It is not like in China. In out country international companies can come in and compete here with them,” he said.

This comes in the wake of the Indian start-up industry has come under a lot of stress over the last year with funding from venture capitalists (VCs) drying out. And start-ups such as Flipkart which has seen its valuations declining by the day as international competitor Amazon tries to take over the space.

Srivastava was the key note speaker at the ISDI for the launch of the start-up accelerator ISDI Ace.