Start-ups mark important change in India's mindset, says Jaitley

New Delhi: Addressing the 'Start-up India' launch programme at Vigyan Bhawan here on Saturday evening, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said today indeed has been a fascinating experience for this country, as it represents the changing social profile of India and probably a future economic and business profile.

It also marks a very important change in the mindsets of India, he said.

"Facilitating start-ups and literary creating a large explosion of activity represents a freedom from day-to-day interference. The state creates the ecosystem and environment, in which people can function and people should function. The only subsequent relationship with the start-ups is that at the end of the year they pay their taxes, continue to earn more and enrich the Indian state and enrich themselves," he added.

"In one sense, this culture in the last few years has already entered India, and I think a major milestone, which really enables us to answer this question is how many amongst the first 30s or 40s top companies in India, which existed as top companies before 1991, still find a place in the top 20s and 30s.

"They have been actually been replaced by the people, who in some small and large were start-ups themselves. They didn't belong to business family or dynasties. They didn't have the benefit of large capital at their disposal. They benefitted from the expanded scope of education in India. They carved out new areas for themselves and excelled.

"And, I think if somebody were to do a serious study of the pre-91 business leaders and those who emerged post that period, we actually learn the story of how an unregulated environment is the survival of the fittest matters. And, that is really the environment that we are creating today," he said.

Stating that the world today has changed and the inbuilt limitations of the conventional economy repeatedly come and stare at us, Jaitley said: "They stared at us in 2008, and are staring at us in 2016. And, therefore, we are all looking for alternate avenues itself. And the start-ups, on the strength of their ideas, on the strength of technology, have actually given the world new solutions."

"The kind of changes which are taking place in the Indian political system itself, even there there is a stark similarity, because an era we lived in where sir name did matter, today they don't. And, therefore, across the board we find the power of start-ups - from business to technologies to politics itself," he said in a lighter vein.