India has witnessed investment of over Rs 1,000 crore in space startups in last 9 months: Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh

From just one startup in the space sector four years back, Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh revealed that India now has almost 190 private startups after opening up of the sector and the earlier ones have now turned entrepreneurs. During an exclusive interview at the Zee TV National Conclave in New Delhi, Dr Singh added that India witnessed investment of over Rs 1,000 crore in space startups in last nine months of the current financial year from April to December 2023.

Crediting this quantum move in India's space sector and scientific exploration to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the minister said that the country's space sector has been opened up for private players, as a result of which there is an overwhelming response from industry as well as investors from private sector. 

"From just one startup in the space sector four years back, we have almost 190 private space startups after opening up of the sector and the earlier ones of them have now turned entrepreneurs," he was quoted by PIB as saying.

He also revealed that overall from just about 350 startups in the year 2014, the country now has about 1,30,000 startups, besides Unicorns.

Stating that PM Modi has provided an enabling milieu with his vision and policy initiatives, Dr Singh said that this has created the opportunity for entrepreneurship. 

He further informed that in the space sector, an interphase called "InSPACE" has been established and a public sector unit called "NSIL" also set up to facilitate PPP mode projects.

He further added that PM Modi has scrapped obsolete rules and focused on citizen-centric governance through optimum use of technology, and in the same vein, the gates of Sriharikota have been thrown open to all stakeholders.

“Not only this, government has been very inclined to use technology to the maximum extent and seeks to do away with all those hindrances or obstructionist rules that were not very enabling,” he opined.

Citing the application of satellites and drones in mapping land ownership under the SVAMITVA scheme and Face Recognition Technology for DLC, the Union minister reminded that India's Chandrayaan Mission was the first to discover evidence of water on the Moon.

Talking about the future, and how India is now taking the lead in frontier areas of technology — including Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Technology, Dr Singh said that the world will witness integrated technology driven growth in the future. 

Citing the success of Aroma Mission, the Union Minister said India has a huge wealth of untapped bioresources, an unsaturated resource waiting to be harnessed, ranging from the Himalayas to the 7,500 kms long coastline.

Stating that the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (NRF) will be an important supplement to this entire ecosystem, Dr Jitendra Singh said it will be majorly funded from non-government sources.

Complementing the NRF, Dr Singh said that the research foundation enriches the ecosystem along with the National Education Policy (NEP-2020) which liberates students from being “prisoners of their aspiration”, by allowing switch over or combinations from different streams of studies such as Humanities and Commerce to Sciences and Engineering.