Piyush Goyal pledges government funds to take Indian startups global

Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has promised state funding to help homegrown startups take their businesses overseas, urging founders to look past the domestic market and compete on the global stage.

Speaking at the ET Startup Awards 2026 in Bengaluru on Friday, Goyal offered government support to sponsor Indian startup delegations at international trade fairs and industry conferences over a three- to five-year push.

"We are willing to fund whatever it takes to take our startups to the rest of the world," Goyal said. "Let's get out of the cozy comfort of the large Indian opportunity or Indian market. Let us think of going global."

Retaining domestic engineering talent

Goyal also argued that international shifts in skilled migration, including tighter H-1B visa access in the United States, could ultimately work in India's favour. Keeping top software and engineering talent within the country provides immediate fuel to domestic enterprises while channelling higher-value work into India's expanding network of global capability centres.

The domestic ecosystem has expanded rapidly under continuous state policy backing and simplified compliance. Times Internet chairman Satyan Gajwani noted at the event that India has surged from hosting only a few hundred recognised ventures to more than 2.5 lakh, creating roughly 25 lakh direct jobs.

Gajwani credited state structural support alongside growing founder confidence for allowing businesses to build proprietary, high-barrier products.

Deep tech and manufacturing gains

Indian startups are moving steadily into capital-intensive deep technology, including semiconductor design, AI robotics, clean energy, and materials science. Gajwani pointed to the milestone launch of Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 rocket as proof of how Indian ventures are achieving complex engineering goals at home.

Moderating a panel on domestic deep-tech development, Accel India founding partner Prashanth Prakash noted that building frontier hardware and scientific ventures requires specialised digital infrastructure and clear regulatory frameworks.

Founders on the panel emphasised that Indian products must compete on quality rather than purely on price. Dheemanth Nagaraj, co-founder and chief executive of Agrani Labs, which develops artificial intelligence graphics processing units (GPUs) for data centres, said there was no room for building substandard products at lower cost. The central government, he suggested, could offer initial momentum by serving as an early buyer.

Spacetech startup Pixxel co-founder and chief technology officer Kshitij Khandelwal noted that recent policy reforms have eased satellite licensing, though setting up physical manufacturing lines still presents local logistical hurdles.

BrainSight AI chief executive Laina Emmanuel noted that translating advanced neuroscience into commercial products demands substantial computing power and steady capital, underscoring the shift across the Indian startup ecosystem toward hard science and durable tech infrastructure.