Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad Tells Startups Inclusion Is The Key

IT and Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had a word of advice for startupsat ET Startup Awards 2019. “I want to tell something to startups. Never ignore the facet of inclusion. Indians love technology. You will never succeed in India without compassion,” he said.

Speaking at an interaction during the award ceremony here on Friday, the minister said that in the last four years, more than 200 BPOs have come up in small towns.

Minister for commerce and industry and railways Piyush Goyal who too was key speaker at the event to reiterate Prasad’s remarks. “More than 20% of the 20,000 startups are in tier 2 and 3 cities. All of this has been possible because we have taken fibre optics across India. The digital access in the last five years has been quick. From 357 km in 2014 to over 3 lakh km now, fibre optics connectivity is huge,” Goyal said.

To a query on what can people expect from the government in the backdrop of economic slowdown, Goyal replied: “You can not certainly expect from us the kind of stimulus that the earlier finance minister made. It was disastrous and the country had to pay heavily. That kind of stimulus to my mind is counter productive.”

Goyal, said, the government does not want the stimulus be misused. “This govt believes in fiscal prudence and ease of doing business. Idea behind any of our tax proposals, decisions is not to hurt business,” he clarified.

The minister also announced that the about 200 railway stations under the South Western Railway are provided with free wi-fi connection. And by September 2, he said, every station in SWR will have wi-fi faster than anybody else. “There are 6500 railway stations in India. We are going to do this in all railway stations in the country. The idea is people in villages can hop into railway stations and get connected to the world,” he said.―Business Telegraph