More than 50% of India’s future startups will rise outside metros: Report

A report by the Bengaluru chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs has projected that more than 50% of Indian startups by 2035 will emerge from Tier 2/3 districts.

Titled ‘India as a Startup Superpower by 2035,A Strategic Roadmap’, the report was released at the 10th edition of the Matrix Global Summit by TiE Bangalore. It was prepared with inputs from more than 60 ecosystem leaders, including founders, investors, policy experts, and academic institutions.

The report calls for a nationwide shift from ‘Startup India’ to ‘Entrepreneurial Bharat’, where entrepreneurship is no longer a metro-driven phenomenon, but a grassroots movement embedded in school curricula, regional economic clusters, and national priorities. It outlines actionable strategies to democratise access to capital, embed entrepreneurial education across academic institutions, and streamline regulatory policies to support high-impact founders across every Indian district.

The document also positions entrepreneurship as a core life skill, proposing its inclusion across 75% of secondary schools and 80% of higher education institutions by 2035. Covering themes across policy, capital, academia, talent, and deep tech, it explores how India can create an innovation economy that contributes 15% to GDP, creates 50 million new jobs, and generates 100+ IPOs on global exchanges by 2035.

“This is not just a report, it’s a strategic invitation to reimagine India’s innovation trajectory,” said Madan Padaki, President, TiE Bangalore and Trustee, TiE Global. 

Mission mode programmes

Infosys cofounder Kris Gopalakrishnan, who spoke at the event, noted that an entrepreneurial mindset should come into the research ecosystem.

“The research ecosystem is still in the olden days. It needs to start thinking big. We can do it,” he said noting that ISRO and DRDO are proofs of that.

Mr. Gopalakrishnan also suggested every institute in the country must come up with three or four ‘mission mode programmes’ every year.

“These are large multi-year, multi-disciplinary mission mode programmes, like creating the human brain atlas, cure for cancer, cure for Alzheimer’s, understanding dementia, creating an autonomous vehicle… In IIT Madras they want to do hyper loop. Every institute must do that. They are doing hundreds of thousands of small incremental projects, like publishing papers. Let that go on. But they must come up with a mission mode programme because the spin out from that will be really large. We need to look at global leadership and creating large businesses with export potential,” he said.

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