Congress President Rahul Gandhi has met startup founders in a series of meetings aimed at understanding their challenges, policy hurdles and other barriers that need ironing out to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in India.
Over the last month or so, Gandhi has met more than a dozen entrepreneurs, including PolicyBazaar’s Yashish Dahiya, Bira91’s Ankur Jain, GOQii’s Vishal Gondal, 1MG’s Prashant Tandon and Snapdeal’s Rohit Bansal among others, as part of a broader political outreach strategy, ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha polls.
The Congress has been unsparing in its criticism about the Modi government’s inability to create enough jobs over the last four years, resulting in widespread unemployment and youth unrest.
The Indian startup community, which has seen a lot of funding and investment activity, has been one of the biggest employers aided by a liberal doze of dollar inflow into storied brands such as Flipkart and Ola, among others.
One of the meetings took place on Wednesday while another one happened last month.
Gondal on Wednesday tweeted a picture of a bunch of entrepreneurs posing with Rahul Gandhi.
Awesome evening @RahulGandhi & startup leaders. Insightful discussions on Data,AI, Privacy, TechDisruptions, Investments, Insurance & Healthcare Excited he upgrading to @GOQii Vital health ecosystem integrated with advice from doctors & coaches. Fitbit Out! thanks @milinddeora pic.twitter.com/hGx2B0YJbx— Vishal Gondal (@vishalgondal) September 19, 2018
“It was a freewheeling chat with no specific agenda. The broader idea was to understand the issues pertaining to the startup ecosystem,” said a person who met Gandhi last month.
Gandhi takes time out to have quick chats with every entrepreneur during these meetings which takes place at his residence.
“Rahul Gandhi had some questions for us pertaining to our respective sectors. The general chat was around the challenges faced by entrepreneurs across multiple sectors. It came down to job creation and the importance of small and medium enterprises in the country,” said another person who met him.
The entrepreneurs were also interested in knowing what Gandhi’s thought process was with respect to startups and entrepreneurs. The chats also included issues pertaining to job creation.
“It was his outreach effort to meet entrepreneurs. He wanted to get a hang of what was going on in the sector and what our expectations were. It was just an opportunity to connect. There was no agenda from either side a casual but a casual one hour chat on general stuff,” said one of those who met Gandhi.
In the past, he has accused the current government of cozying up to big corporates, calling the Modi administration a "suit boot ki sarkar".
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