Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday met leading private equity and venture capitalist players to understand how India could showcase its startup ecosystem on a global stage, as well as boost investment in the country, just months ahead of the Budget Meeting for the next fiscal year.
Highlighting the steps the government has already taken to improve the ease of doing business in the country, PM Modi mentioned key reforms taken by the government to help more startups set up shop, the future potential of initiatives like PM GatiShakti, and innovation happening at the grassroot level.
He sought suggestions from the attendees on further improving business operations in India, and committed towards resolving the issues and challenges that have been highlighted by the business community.
Prominent startup VCs such as Rajan Anandan from Sequoia, Munish Verma from Softbank, Siddharth Pai from 3one4, Amit Dalmia from Blackstone, Prashant Prakash from Accel, and Gopal Srinivasan from TVS Capitals were present at the meeting.
Sandeep Naik from General Atlantic said the firm plans to increase its investment in India over the next decade.
Narendra Modi (Source: Twitter)
“I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next 10 years we invest about $10-15 billion in India, because this is one of the most critical destinations for us globally,” he was reported as saying.
The VC and PE reps also spoke about how India had great entrepreneurial potential, and gave suggestions about how that potential could be leveraged on a global scale.
The investing community lauded the initiative undertaken by the PM, and agreed that India was a critical investment hub for the world, not just them. Siddharth Pai termed Modi the ‘Startup Prime Minister’, while Accel’s Prashant Prakash said there were a lot of great opportunities in the agritech space.
Shantanu Nalavadi from India Resurgent, Renuka Ramnath from Multiples, Manish Kejriwal from Kedaara Capital, Ankur Gupta from Brookfield, Mukul Arora from Elevation, and Sehraj Singh from Prosus were among the attendees at the event.