Delhi has replaced Bengaluru as the startup capital of India, according to the Economic Survey 2021-22 tabled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament on Monday.

The survey states that over 5,000 recognised startups were added in Delhi between April 2019 to December 2021 while 4,514 startups were added in Bengalurur during this period.

However, with a total of 11,308 startups, Maharashtra has the highest number of recognised startups in the country.

India also had a record number of 44 startups achieve unicorn status in 2021.

India has now overtaken the UK to become the third highest country in the number of unicorns after the US and China which added 487 and 301 unicorns respectively in 2021.

As of January 14, 2022, India has 83 unicorns with a total valuation of $ 277.77 billion.

Moreover, the number of new recognised startups have increased to over 14,000 in 2021-22 from only 733 in 2016-17.

The Economic Survey also states that in the last three years the number of startups in the space sector has increased from 11 in 2019 to 47 in 2021. One of the important factors responsible for this was providing a predictable, forward-looking, well defined and enabling regulatory regime for space activities in the country. The first to be updated were the SpaceCom and SpaceRS policies, further liberalising the traditional satellite communication and remote sensing sectors, respectively, and enabling entrepreneurs to take up end-to-end activities in these domains.

The Economic Survey has highlighted the fact most of India’s startups are in the IT/ knowledge-based sector. Intellectual property, specifically patents are key to this knowledge-based economy. There has been a gradual increase in the filing and granting of patents in India. The number of patents filed in India has gone up from 39,400 in 2010-11 to 45,444 in 2016-17 to 58,502 in 2020-21 and the patents granted in India has gone up from 7,509 to 9,847 to 28,391 during the same time period.

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