Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal called on Indian startups to pursue growth beyond their home market, outlining government-backed funding to support their presence at trade exhibitions and conferences abroad. Sustaining that effort over three to five years, he argued, would position startups to enter untapped markets and build the kind of track record that draws investor interest.
Speaking at the ET Startup Awards 2026 held in Bengaluru on Friday, Goyal put forward the view that tighter H-1B visa restrictions could redirect skilled workers back to India and channel more business toward the country's global capability centres. He told founders gathered at the event that government support was available for Indian startups pursuing international growth, with an emphasis on looking outward rather than depending on the domestic market. He also proposed that the organisation consider expanding its reach internationally.
Times Internet Chairman Satyan Gajwani pointed to gaps in India's artificial intelligence development, arguing that the country trails behind in research depth, computing infrastructure, and access to long-term investment funding — areas where progress, in his view, has not kept pace with what the nation's potential warrants.
Gajwani observed that founders across India's startup landscape are directing their attention toward deep, proprietary technology, a shift that he said points to the broader ecosystem reaching a new level of maturity. Pointing to the Vikram-1 rocket developed by Skyroot Aerospace, he put forward the view that Indian startups are demonstrating expanding technical depth, with ventures now working across semiconductor chip design, AI robotics, clean energy, and advanced materials — areas where, he added, investors are also establishing funds structured to accommodate the longer development timelines these companies require.
Gajwani traced the development to a combination of factors: founders who had built companies going on to back new ones as investors, alongside state-level support for the industry — a combination that, in his words, had taken shape through the advocacy and sustained effort of many leaders across the space. He noted that the number of officially recognised startups in India has expanded from a few hundred to over 250,000, a shift that has brought roughly 2.5 million jobs into existence.
Prashanth Prakash, a founding partner at Accel India who chaired the panel on deep tech ambitions, argued that ventures in that space depend on a web of infrastructure and regulatory conditions that conventional software businesses have never had to navigate.
Dheemanth Nagaraj, who co-founded Agrani Labs and serves as its chief executive while the company develops AI graphics processors for data centres, put forward the position that quality functions as the defining measure for any Indian product pursuing a foothold in global markets, and that trimming costs at the expense of standards leaves no workable path to that goal. He noted that the government, by taking on the role of an initial buyer, could lay the groundwork for a viable market.
Pixxel co-founder and CTO Kshitij Khandelwal noted that while regulatory changes had made satellite licensing more straightforward, building out manufacturing infrastructure presented its own set of difficulties — ones he described as primarily rooted in local conditions.
BrainSight AI's co-founder and CEO, Laina Emmanuel, described the work of mapping brain function as drawing on demanding science and substantial computing resources, noting that the company faces steep challenges across the science itself, the underlying technology, and the effort to build a market.
Speaking at a panel focused on the path to a public listing, Meesho's chief executive Vidit Aatrey described an exchange at the company's first annual general meeting, where retired attendees told him they had put the savings of their working lives into the business — a moment he said reshaped how he understood his obligations to shareholders.
Groww CEO Lalit Keshre noted that the listing brought the company and its users closer together, with a number of those users taking on shareholder status in the process. He described the company's guiding approach as one of holding a long-term outlook while keeping execution focused on near-term steps.
