India has 50,000 recognised startups; 45% have women entrepreneurs

One woman from each of the 98 families of Chayanpurva is now engaged in making wax diyas.

India has over 50,000 startups recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) with at least 45 percent of them having women entrepreneurs, a data issued by the department said on June 3.

With the launch of the Startup India initiative, recognised startups have now spread across 623 districts within at least 10,000 started getting added to the recognised list in the last six months.

Interestingly, each state and UT has at least one startup now with Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat having the greatest number of startups.

As many as 743 startups were recognised in 2016-2017, in the first year of the initiative, which has now increased exponentially to over 16,000 startups being recognised in the year 2020-2021.

Entrepreneurs now have options to avail benefits across a range of laws, regulations, fiscal and infrastructural support, leading to a surge in startup ecosystem growth.

According to DPIIT, the recognised startups have contributed significantly to job creation, with 5,49,842 jobs reported by 48,093 startups with an average number of 11 employees per startup. About 1.7 lakh jobs were created by recognised startups in the 2020-2021 period alone.

The sectors that had the maximum registered startups were food processing, product development, application development, IT consulting and business support services.

"Startup India at DPIIT has played a pivotal role in strengthening the key pillars identified for our startup economy," DPIIT said in a statement.

Funding opportunities to startups have been enhanced through the Fund of Funds Scheme with an overlay of Rs 10,000 crore and the recently launched Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS) with an outlay of Rs 945 crore.

However, DPITT did not clarify how much of these funds have been disbursed since the announcement so far.