For most of the last decade, the focus has been on startups: entrepreneurship, venture capital, unicorns, and digital business. However, today the discussion has taken on a deeper character. Questions are arising about who will develop India's artificial intelligence models, who will design its chips, who will fund laboratories, rocket programs, biotechnology platforms, and quantum computers, and whether future entrepreneurs can emerge from every district, not just Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai.
Over the past twelve years, and especially intensely in the last year, the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been answering these questions through capital, computing power, and national missions. In celebration of his 76th birthday, 17 key steps significant for India's engineers have been presented, outlining what they lay down for the coming decade.
Funding Research and Innovation
The Research, Development, and Innovation Fund may prove to be the most significant intervention this year. It is designed to attract long-term, low-cost capital into complex areas such as biotechnology, space, robotics, quantum technologies, energy, and AI. The Cabinet approved this fund on July 1, 2025, and the Prime Minister launched it on November 3, 2025, at ESTIC, allocating ₹20,000 crore for the 2026 fiscal year. Funds have already started flowing: the Technology Council signed the first agreements with five deep technology companies and made the first payment on May 13, 2026. It is important to note that India has never lacked entrepreneurial ambition, but deep technology requires something more complex—patient capital.
Startup Support and Access to Capital
Furthermore, in February, the Cabinet approved the Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0 with a capital of ₹10,000 crore, prioritizing deep technology, technology-driven manufacturing, early founders, and investments outside major metropolitan areas. The next startup cycle is planned to be distinct from the consumer internet cycle that spawned India's first unicorns.
Access to seed capital has become easier thanks to the startup credit guarantee scheme, which doubled the maximum coverage per borrower from ₹10 crore to ₹20 crore in the 2026 fiscal year. By the end of the year, over 410 loans worth more than ₹1,250 crore were guaranteed. For founders, this means access to working capital that does not always require giving up equity in the company.
Public capital has stimulated private investment. The initial Fund of Funds demonstrates how the government can support startups without selecting them directly. By the end of the 2026 fiscal year, over ₹7,000 crore was directed to more than 135 Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs), which in turn invested over ₹26,900 crore in more than 1,420 startups. This ratio is nearly four rupees of private money for every one rupee of public money. The goal of FoF 2.0 is to replicate this multiplier effect for deep technologies.
AI Infrastructure and National Missions
The biggest hurdle for serious AI companies is no longer talent, but computational power. Under the IndiaAI Mission, over 38,000 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are available to startups and researchers at a subsidized rate of about ₹65 per hour, and another 20,000 were announced in February, with a target of 100,000 by December 2026. The necessary foundations are being built so that entrepreneurs can build upon them.
India is moving from using AI to creating its own indigenous AI, supporting domestic foundational models instead of assuming that the base level of AI must come from outside. Twelve startups have been selected to create multimodal foundational models on India-specific data, and Sarvam presented two open-source models—30B and 105B—at the AI Impact summit in February. There is a shift in focus from adopting AI to owning it.
Semiconductors as an Industrial Mission
This is one of the biggest bets of the current year. On July 15, 2026, the Cabinet approved Semicon 2.0 with allocations of ₹1,27,500 crore. This program aims to address the shortcomings of the first phase, namely the excessive dependence on imported equipment and specialty chemicals. Twelve enterprises were approved under the first phase, three of which are already supplying chips, and the first front-end factory in Dholera is expected to begin commercial production in 2028. The question for founders is no longer whether India can produce chips, but what share of the design, equipment, and intellectual property around them Indian companies can own.
Expansion of Scope
Deep technology fields such as quantum computing, robotics, space, biotechnology, and advanced materials were previously secondary to the Indian venture market. The RDI Fund defines them as strategic. This is important because India's most valuable companies in the 2030s may take ten years to create, not ten months.
The private space sector continues to evolve. India's deeper history of space reforms is related less to rockets and more to creating an ecosystem that allows private companies access to what was previously inaccessible. A ₹1,000 crore venture fund, a ₹500 crore technology adoption fund, and access to ISRO's infrastructure, experience, and mentorship now coexist with validation in orbit on the ISRO POEM platform. Space is transforming into an industry, not just a program.
Biotechnology has bridged the gap from lab to market. India possesses enormous scientific potential, but the problem lay in translating this knowledge into finished products. The Bio-RIDE scheme, amounting to ₹9,197 crore, which includes a new component for bioproduction and biofactories, aims to solve this problem, alongside promoting bioproduction under the BioE3 policy.
Quantum computing has moved from a dream to a full-fledged ecosystem. The National Quantum Mission provides allocations of ₹6,003.65 crore over eight years and covers four thematic centers: computation, communication, sensing, and metrology, as well as materials and devices. The task now is to transform the research conducted in these centers into independent companies.
Scaling and Democratization
The 2026 fiscal year was the largest for Startup India: over 55,200 startups were recognized, the highest figure in a single year. The total number of recognized startups exceeded 223 thousand by March 31, 2026, providing over 2.33 million direct jobs. The next critical metric is not the number of registered companies, but their ability to scale.
Entrepreneurship is extending beyond major cities: over 45 percent of startups recognized by DPIIT are now based in second and third-tier cities. This could be the most important story of democratization. India cannot build its entrepreneurial future by limiting itself to only five postal codes.
The increase in women in the formal startup economy is also noticeable: over 48 percent of more than 107 thousand recognized startups have at least one female director or partner. The next stage of development is capital: what volume of funds will reach women who founded and manage companies?
Innovation is becoming infrastructure. Fiber-optic communication lines, 5G, computing power, and capital markets are not separate stories but interconnected elements. Over 218 thousand Gram Panchayats are ready to be served thanks to BharatNet, and 5G covers 99.9 percent of districts. These are the 'rails' on which the next founder can build, regardless of where they live.
India's innovation ranking continues to rise: the country climbed from 81st place in the Global Innovation Index to 38th, and also became the sixth global leader in patent applications, filing over 63,000 applications in 2024. Rankings themselves are not the final goal, but they indicate the direction of movement.
New Vector of Development
For many years, the main question was: can India create successful startups? Today the question is different: can India own the technologies that will define the next 25 years? This concerns AI models, chips, rockets, quantum computing, biotechnology, robotics, energy, and advanced manufacturing. This unites most of the decisions made—the transition from Startup India to Build India, from adoption to invention, from entrepreneurship to technological sovereignty.
A birthday is a moment for summing up. However, for Indian entrepreneurs, a more interesting question is what comes next. The government has laid the foundation: accessible capital, viable computing power, and missions defining the boundaries of possibility. Now the task for founders becomes more complex: turning registrations into sustainable companies, participation of women into women's capital, research in centers into finished products, and Indian chips into Indian intellectual property.
The government can build the rails, but capital can provide the fuel, and institutions can open the doors. But entrepreneurs must do the building.
In honor of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 76th birthday, the most significant indicator of the path forward will not be the number of registered startups, but the number of sustainable companies, technologies, and jobs that India creates. The next chapter of Startup India must be Build India.
