Aman Gupta backs Piyush Goyal’s call for India to compete in deeptech and AI

Boat co-founder Aman Gupta on Sunday agreed with Union Minister Piyush Goyal's take to compete with other countries in Artificial Intelligence and Deeptech. He further said that said that we need to go deep in climate, mobility, infra.

"Benchmarking against China, the US, or anyone else — isn’t weakness. It’s smart strategy. We’re already the 3rd largest startup ecosystem in the world and the fastest-growing major economy. But if we want to be No.1 — We need to also go deep into AI, deeptech, climate, mobility, infra. We need LLMs and innovation stacks that compete on global standards," he said.

"And to make that happen, we also need Scientific risk, More patient capital, Founder–policymaker collaboration and a long-term national vision," he added.

Its not every day that the government asks founders to dream bigger.But at Startup Mahakumbh, thats exactly what happened. I was there. I heard the full speech. Hon. Minister @PiyushGoyal Ji isnt against founders. He believes in us.His point was simple: India has come far, pic.twitter.com/bA4ontAz1M

Aman Gupta (@amangupta0303) April 6, 2025

His remarks came after Piyush Goyal drew a sharp comparison between Indian and Chinese businesses at 'Startup Mahakumbh 2025', warning entrepreneurs to change their perspective.

“Are we happy about being delivery girls and boys? Food delivery apps are turning unemployed youth into cheap labour so rich can get their meals without moving out of the house. Kids of billionaires are making fancy ice cream/cookies and calling it a start-up,” said Goyal while addressing the event.

“Chinese are making semi con chips, EV batteries. India has only 1,000 deeptech start-ups. Dukaandari hi karni hai (Do you want to just sell things)?,” he asked Aman Gupta.