PM hails 10 years of India's start-up leap

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday opened the year's first Mann ki Baat with a popular social media trend of revisiting the year 2016, using the moment to recall the launch of Startup India, and highlighted how far the ecosystem has come in a decade.

- HT Correspondent

In the 130th episode of his Mann ki Baat, the PM said in January 2016, the Centre launched an “ambitious journey” that many did not fully understand at the time. That journey, he said, was Startup India. Today, Modi said, India has become the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, with young entrepreneurs working in sectors that were “unimaginable even 10 years ago,” including AI, space, nuclear energy, and semiconductors. He applauded young founders even as he made a strong pitch for focusing on quality in the manufacturing industry. “The era of ‘it just happens, it works somehow’ is over,” he