Noida among leading startup hubs in Northern India

Virendra Singh Rawat

Lucknow / Jan 4, 2021

The National Capital Region (NCR) city of Noida has emerged as the leading startup hub of Uttar Pradesh with 1,219 registered startup ventures.

In the startup chart, Ghaziabad and Lucknow are placed distant second and third in UP with 533 and 500 registered startup ventures as recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Government of India.

In September 2020, UP was ranked in the category of ‘Emerging Startup Ecosystem’ in the Startup Ranking 2020 of Indian states released by the DPIIT.

According to the state government, whereas only 200 startups could be established in UP before 2017, a total of 3,406 startups had been set up in three years, which provided direct and indirect employment to 22,000 youth across 75 districts.

UP additional chief secretary, IT and electronics, Alok Kumar said the state was encouraging the youth to set up startup ventures under the UP Startup Policy 2020.

Interestingly, 773 startups were established in UP between December 2019 and December 2020 even during the Covid-19 pandemic period. Some of the startups were also set up in the comparatively backward Bundelkhand and Purvanchal regions of the state.

Besides, the government is facilitating the targetted setting up of 100 new incubators, of which 18 incubators were already functioning. “By providing training and other services through these incubators, new startups will be developed. After this, approximately 10,000 new startups will be established which will provide direct employment to over 50,000 people and indirect employment to over 100,000 people,” he informed.

While the erstwhile startup policy focussed on startups in the fields of Information Technology (IT) and electronics, the new policy is according equal impetus to ventures in varied sectors viz. medicine, health, agriculture, khadi, energy, education, transport, tourism, agriculture, textiles etc.

Recently, the state had approved the proposal of seven new incubators. It included the ‘10,000 Startups’ Warehouse programme of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) in Noida.