• Union Minister Piyush Goyal chaired the 4th meeting of National Startup Advisory Council (NSAC) in New Delhi. 

• He urged the NSAC to focus on tier-2 and tier-3 cities for venture capital funding, capacity building and creating awareness about government schemes that promote startups in those regions.

• He also emphasised on the need for capacity building and creating awareness about various initiatives of the government to promote startups in such cities.

• The council deliberated upon matters related to the startup ecosystem, including protecting ownership of startups with original promoters, incorporating in India, listing in India and developing innovation hubs.

• The members shared progress on programmes presented in earlier NSAC meetings including National Mentorship Program, Investor-Startup Matchmaking Portal, Incubator Capacity Development Program, etc.

• The minister also launched NavIC Grand Challenge which aims at promoting adoption of NavIC as a geo-positioning solution.

National Startup Advisory Council

• The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) constituted the National Startup Advisory Council (NSAC) to advise the government on measures needed to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation and startups in the country to drive sustainable economic growth and generate large scale employment opportunities. 

• The first meeting of the NSAC was conducted on April 15, 2021. 

• The NSAC is chaired by minister for commerce & industry. 

• Besides the ex-officio members, the council has a number of non-official members, representing various stakeholders such as founders of successful startups, veterans who have grown and scaled companies in India, persons capable of representing interest of investors into startups, persons capable of representing interests of incubators and accelerators, representatives of associations of stakeholders of startups and representatives of industry associations. 

• It is a one of its kind congregation wherein the policy making process is driven as part of collaboration between all the key stakeholders of the startup ecosystem.

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