India will be home to 11,500 tech startups by 2020: NASSCOM

With more than 3,000 tech startups, India is the fourth largest base for young businesses in the world and it is expected that by 2020 the base will increase to 11,500 tech startups, according to NASSCOM. A joint study ‘Tech Start-up in India: A Bright Future’ by NASSCOM and Zinnov suggests that the Indian startups with their unique solutions are witnessing increased traction in global whitespace opportunities such as Internet of Things, augmented realty, smart hardware, BI and many more. With technology spreading its wings into different domains, ‘Domain+Tech’ solutions are taking over other trends. The emerging niche technology solutions are primarily focused on Ad-tech, Edu-tech, Health-tech, Agri-tech and many more, the study highlighted. Geographically, Bangalore and National Capital Region (NCR) tops the chart for being home to maximum number of young businesses. [caption id=“attachment_1620787” align=“alignleft” width=“300”]  Startup[/caption] The findings also highlight that many trends are maturing in the ecosystem, especially funding aspect. Multiple and easily accessible platform like VC/PE, angel investors, incubators, financial institutes and even banks, are the driving force for the same. “In fact, during 2010-2014 timeframe close to $3 billion is expected to be invested in Indian startups.” Commenting on the new evolution of the ecosystem, Rajat Tandon, senior director, NASSCOM 10,000 Startups, added, “These latest findings clearly indicate the beginning of the golden era for young tech-based businesses, where opportunities for growth are much larger than the challenges in the ecosystem. We are proud to be once again at the cutting edge in helping to support a growing niche within this field, and we are excited to ink new partnerships as we close the year to accelerate our efforts in that direction.” According to NASSCOM, the 10,000 Startups programme has paved way for 3 trends that are shaping the Indian economy with the potential to shake things up: Digitalization, faster innovation cycles, and the rise of young, ambitious talent. The programme is partnering with AstroLabs Dubai, to navigate Indian Tech Startups to the MENA region. The startup programme also tied-up with ValPro, an investment banking and financial advisory services, to leverage a web based platform ‘Enablers’ which facilitates startups and SME’s to connect with HNI’s, Angels, and VC’s for fund raising. And, there’s another association with CampusEAI Consortium. CampusEAI EduTech Venture Fund invests in early stage enterprise software, Internet and mobile companies that target the education market or companies created from intellectual property technology transfer from colleges and universities. To support early-stage companies in healthcare and Life-sciences domain, NASSCOM partnered with Escape Velocity Accelerator to review applications for selecting entrepreneurs into its incubation program. 10,000 Start-ups is a NASSCOM initiative supported by Google for Entrepreneurs, Microsoft Ventures, Verisign, Kotak and Intel.