India turns innovation into people’s movement: MoS telecom Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar

He credited the JAM Trinity — Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, and Mobile — with building of the foundation of India’s digital revolution, enabling 900 million internet users

India has transformed innovation from a niche pursuit into a national movement, powered by policy, purpose and people, minister of state for communications and rural development Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar said on October 8, crediting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade of leadership for redefining the country’s technological and entrepreneurial landscape.

“Under the visionary leadership of PM Modi, India has turned innovation into a people’s movement, a national conviction and a collective mission,” Chandra Sekhar said, adding that what India has achieved in ten years “isn’t miraculous — it’s methodical.”

India’s Innovation Decade

India is now the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, with 1.9 lakh startups, and patent filings have doubled from 40,000 in 2014 to over 80,000 in 2025. “Code is being written in tier-3 cities, and startups are launching from college dorms,” he said, underlining that innovation has moved beyond urban boundaries.

Citing Chandrayaan-3’s landing on the lunar south pole, he said the achievement symbolized India’s growing confidence: “It wasn’t just ISRO that succeeded — every Indian who ever dreamed of reaching for the stars succeeded.”

In the defence sector, he said, India has shifted “from 70 percent imports to becoming an exporter,” with defence exports surging 30-fold from Rs 686 crore in 2013–14 to over Rs 21,000 crore in 2023–24. Indigenous 4G and 5G stacks, the country’s first homegrown MRI machine, and Covid-19 vaccines have further showcased India’s capacity for “frugal yet world-class innovation.”

Building the Ecosystem

“These milestones didn’t happen by accident — they’re the result of systematic policy and sustained investment,” the minister said.

He credited the JAM Trinity — Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, and Mobile — with building of the foundation of India’s digital revolution, enabling 900 million internet users, including 400 million in rural areas. With among the lowest data costs globally Rs 9 per GB) and UPI handling over 10 billion transactions a month, India has made access universal.

To democratize knowledge, the One Nation One Subscription policy now provides 13,000+ international journals to over 6,000 institutions and 1.8 crore students and faculty for free. Meanwhile, Atal Tinkering Labs are expanding from 10,000 to 50,000 by 2025, offering robotics kits and 3D printers to school students.

The National Research Foundation with a Rs 50,000 crore corpus, 75 Research Parks, and a Rs 6,000 crore National Quantum Mission mark India’s commitment to cutting-edge research.

Reforms and Mindset Shift

The minister said reforms such as Startup India, GST, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and abolition of retrospective taxation have created a “trust-first” business environment. “We’ve moved from the license raj to celebrating entrepreneurs as nation builders,” he said.

More than policy or infrastructure, however, the biggest transformation, he said, was psychological. “We’ve moved from a defensive ‘we can’t’ to an assertive ‘why not us?’,” Chandra Sekhar said.

“From Atal Tinkering Labs to Digital India and Atmanirbhar Bharat, the common thread is democratization — making innovation accessible, affordable, and achievable for every Indian,” he concluded. “Innovation is in our DNA, and India has only just begun to awaken it.”