.jpg)
India’s startup ecosystem is being pushed toward its next phase: building companies that compete globally rather than relying only on the scale of the domestic market.
At the ET Startup Awards 2026 in Bengaluru, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal urged founders to expand overseas and said the government was willing to support startups participating in international exhibitions and conferences.
Goyal argued that a sustained three-to-five-year international push could help Indian startups enter new markets and attract global investors. He also said tighter access to H-1B visas abroad could potentially benefit India by retaining skilled talent and bringing more work to global capability centres in the country.
But the event also surfaced a second challenge. Times Internet chairman Satyan Gajwani saidIndia was moving too slowly in artificial intelligence compared with the US and China, and called for deeper research, greater computing capacity and more patient capital. He pointed to India’sgrowing activity in semiconductors, AI robotics, clean energy and advanced materials as signs founders are increasingly attempting harder, proprietary technology problems.
That shift brings a different set of requirements. Accel India founding partner Prashanth Prakash said deeptech companies need infrastructure and regulatory support beyond what conventional software businesses required. Agrani Labs cofounder Dheemanth Nagaraj also argued that Indian products must compete globally on quality, while suggesting government procurement could help create an early market for domestic technology.
The two messages ultimately converge. Going global requires Indian startups to think beyond domestic distribution, but competing internationally in emerging technologies will also depend on stronger research, compute, manufacturing and patient capital at home. India may already have startup scale; the next test is whether it can convert that scale into globally competitive technology companies.
Filed by
Startup Unplugged
