Nearly 44,000 startups registered in 2025, highest since the launch of Startup India: PM Modi

Nearly 44,000 startups registered with the government in 2025, the highest annual addition since Startup India was launched, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday (January 16, 2025) at an event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Startup India scheme.

Launched on January 16, 2016, the flagship initiative seeks to foster innovation, promote entrepreneurship, and enable investment-driven growth.

The biggest jump

“I’m even more pleased to see that the momentum of Startup India is steadily increasing,” Mr. Modi said. “Today’s startups are becoming unicorns, unicorns are launching their IPOs, and creating more and more jobs. Last year alone, in 2025, nearly 44,000 new startups were registered. This is the biggest jump in any single year since the launch of Startup India.” 

The Prime Minister said that the Startup India mission has become a “revolution” in India, with the country taking its position as the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world. 

“Ten years ago, there were fewer than 500 startups in the country; today, that number has grown to over 200,000,” Mr. Modi said. “In 2014, India had only four unicorns; today, there are nearly 125 active unicorns in India… These figures bear witness to how our startups are driving the ecosystem, innovation, and growth.”

Increase in risk-taking

The Prime Minister also talked about how the perception of risk-taking has changed in the country, becoming more widely accepted and even respected.

“Earlier, risk-taking was discouraged in the country, but today, risk-taking has become mainstream,” Mr. Modi said, adding, “Those who think beyond monthly salary are not only accepted but respected. Risk-taking ideas, which people once considered fringe, are now becoming fashionable.”

During his speech, the Prime Minister said that more than ₹25,000 crore has been invested through the Fund of Funds for startups that had been created by the government. 

Deep tech in focus

Speaking to the media after the event, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said the focus of the Fund of Funds 2.0, approved in April 2025 with a corpus of ₹10,000 crore, would be on deep tech, particularly in areas witnessing a lot of innovation, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum technologies, defence, and aerospace. 

“These are areas where the country has a need, and where we want to become a global leader,” Mr. Goyal said. “Usually, startups in these areas take a long time to reach the proof-of-concept stage and become successful. The focus will be to make more risk capital available for this.”