A corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore to scale up research and innovation in sunrise domains will be a "game-changer and a force-multiplier", Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajeev Chandrasekhar told NDTV hours after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made the big announcement in the interim budget.
Terming it a golden era for the country's tech- savvy youth, Ms Sitharaman said the corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore will be established with 50-year interest-free loans to encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation.
"It is a brilliant way to quantify if you want to call it or realise this vision that the Prime minister has that as the country our economy throws up more and more of these opportunities. That they are available to our youngsters, to our start ups, to our entrepreneurs, to our larger companies.. That there is ample source of credit and capital that is available to them to innovate to research," said Mr Chandrasekhar.
The Minister said that it is now time for the country to actively become the producer of the technologies of the future with innovative platforms, devices and products of the future.
"One lakh crore being given as a government low-cost finance will in turn bring in additional resources and make this capital available to this ecosystem of companies and start-ups and individuals who want to innovate and research. It is absolutely a gamechanger and a force-multiplier in a lot of ways to the ambition that we have to create a trillion dollar digital economy and a five trillion dollar economy," the Minister added.
The Indian economy is projected to grow close to 7 per cent in the financial year 2024-25 which starts this April, said the Ministry of Finance in a review report.
The next wave of start-ups is what the country is prepping for, what the Prime Minister is prepping for, said the Minister, adding that supporting policies are engineered to ensure that there is more and more of this energy that will drive this ambition of India to be a "viksit Bharat".
"We are working to make India a 'Viksit Bharat' by 2047. For achieving that goal, we need to improve people's capability and empower them," said Nirmala Sitharaman while presenting the budget.
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