The industry should be ready to take up the responsibility of being an equal stakeholder in startups, right from the moment a project is conceived, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said today.

This, he said, was essential not only for sustaining the startups in the long run by linking them with a livelihood but also for bringing about value addition to the Indian Industry as per the contemporary global benchmarks, he said addressing an exclusive session of Industrialists, Start-Ups, and Innovators at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) in Hyderabad.

Jitendra Singh said Hyderabad was known to be a destination of health and wealth as well as the pharma capital of the region. Therefore, the specialised and skilled manpower developed by the IICT should find a naturally integral place in the pharma and biotech industry of Hyderabad in particular and India in general, he added.

For the first time after several decades, India has a political leadership that was amenable to abandoning the obsolete regulations of the past and bringing in enabling reforms for ease of Start-Ups as well as ease of business.

He advised the Industry leaders to set up an institutionalised mechanism and come forth with precise and concrete proposals for doing away with unwarranted regulations and options to avoid procedural delays.

Jitendra Singh said the underdevelopment Hyderabad Pharma City (HPC) was the world’s largest integrated cluster in Hyderabad for pharmaceutical industries with a thrust on R&D and manufacturing. He said the cluster has been recognised as a National Investment and Manufacturing Zone (NIMZ) by the Government of India, given its national and international importance.

He said that with the active and constant support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India was scaling new heights each day in the Science, Technology, Innovation (STI) eco-system. He said that out of 130 countries, India was at number 81 in the Global Innovation Index till 2015, but it jumped to the 40th position in 2022. Today, India was among the top three countries in the world in terms of PhDs and was also among the top three in terms of the start-up ecosystem, he added.