Very Bullish About Indian Startup Ecosystem: Google CEO Pichai

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday said he was very bullish on the Indian startup ecosystem despite the current economic downturn.

Speaking at the Google for India 2022 event, Pichai drove the point that Google was created in moments of downturn and there was no better time to do a startup than now.

Pichai said the sophistication of Indian startup ecosystem has grown significantly and measurably. He said that he notices this with each visit to India. 

But he also noted that policies and Google can play a role in enabling Indian startups easily scale the entirety of the nation. He felt that there was an opportunity for India to help make it easier for startups to scale in the country.

According to Tracxn’s Geo Annual Report: India Tech 2022, the number of companies that obtained the ‘unicorn’ status in the startup world fell to 22 in 2022. The report said the average time startups took to go from Series A to unicorn round was 5.1 years in 2022.

The number of funding rounds also decreased by 30 per cent in 2022 between January and November in comparison to 2021. The larger deals declined even more steeply, according to the report.

Meanwhile, the number of companies closing funding rounds over USD 100 million has dropped by 35 per cent to 55 in 2022, as compared to 85 in 2021.

At the Google event, Pichai drew the example of startups in the US and attributed their success to the ease of scaling services and products due to immediate access to more than 300 million people. This means that it’s easy to build something which scales across the country, said the Google CEO.

“Part of what we have done with the India Digitization Fund is increasingly focusing on our investments towards startups from India like Glance. These companies are getting noticeable scale,” he said.

Also Read: Hope India Finds Right Balance, Says Google's Sundar Pichai On Tech Regulations