SOA E-Summit-2024: India Now 3rd-Largest Startup Economy, Says Omkar Rai

Bhubaneswar: India has emerged as the world’s third-largest start-up economy, behind the USA and China, Executive Chairman of Start-up Odisha Dr Omkar Rai said here on Saturday.

Speaking at the inauguration of ‘SOA E-Summit-2024’ at Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan Deemed to be University (SOA) here, Dr Rai said it was time for students to take more interest in startups to become self-dependent and position themselves as job providers instead of seeking employment themselves.

Expressing happiness over SOA laying emphasis on nurturing Incubation Centres, Dr Rai observed that startups had been creating enormous opportunities for students who can make their initiatives profit-oriented with less investment.

Dr Rai said that Odisha had 1940 recognised startups, including 151 in agricultural sector, 25 in AI, 27 in automotive, 13 in telecommunication & networking, 133 in education sector, 2 in conventional energy and 22 in renewable energy.

Dr Rai inaugurated a startup expo and 24-hour idea prototype hackathon at the event organised jointly by Atal Incubation Centre-SOA Foundation and Centre for Innovation and Incubation (SOA-CII) at Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER), SOA’s faculty of engineering and technology.

SOA Vice-Chancellor Prof. Pradipta Kumar Nanda said that the university had organised such an E-Summit for the first time, adding that the university was laying stress on innovation not only in engineering and technology but other disciplines as well.

Kaynes SemiCon CEO Raghu Panicker also addressed the inaugural programme.