Minister criticizes Indian startup scene for lacking focus on deep tech | Hacker News Reader

Minister criticizes Indian startup scene for lacking focus on deep tech

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

2 pointsfreebird004 comments

Indian Union minister criticized Indian start-up ecosystem highlighting the lack of deep-tech start-ups and innovation. He also expressed his concern over too much focus on "quick food delivery" and "healthy ice cream" type start-ups which are basically what Indian start-up ecosystem comprise of at this moment. He also drew comparison with China highlighting their strides of innovation and development in fields like EV, AI and more and called for Indian entrepreneurs and start-ups to strive for something like that.

Indian start-up ecosystem, however, hasn't taken this comment lightly and some of the founders have come out openly to criticize the minister and the government as a whole claiming the lack of support and capital to build something like this in India.

This HN thread is pertinent here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33368104

What's the Indian bankruptcy amd insolvency policy? That's the big thing in America: trying and failing is not a crime.

<snark> In America, trying to nail the top criminal is failing </snark>

Snark aside, you are right. Bankruptcy protection is a really big factor.

There are many other factors about America that work.

1. An obsessive urge to be new and differentiate oneself from the past, be it music or cars or tech. There aren't other countries that commonly say "this is sooo last year".

2. An entrepreneurial mindset. Looking at the patents from the early 20th century, we discover people with little formal education who were creating products for the mass market as well as for industry. That said, I think that the

3. College profs and new grads who create products.

I feel that the information economy has skewed everything. The ease of creating apps (in contrast to a physical product), combined with ridiculous Silicon Valley VC money has narrowed the vision of what it means to do a startup. Perhaps I am wrong; maybe it is my HN bias.

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