Union Education Minister Pralhad Joshi on Friday, 25 September called upon established startup founders and industry partners to step up as mentors for the next generation of innovators, saying those who once received early-stage support now have a responsibility to help young entrepreneurs convert ideas into products and scalable solutions. Joshi made the appeal while addressing the Seva First Innovation Challenge at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru.

The Core Message: Pay It Forward

Joshi struck a personal chord with founders in the audience, reminding them of their own journeys. 'When you were struggling to put up a startup, someone or the other supported you. Now you support these young people, our bright future,' he said, urging both startup founders and industry partners to actively engage with teams participating in the challenge.

He emphasised that the initiative was not designed merely as a prize competition. The goal, he said, was to identify promising ideas, provide sustained mentoring, and facilitate implementation at scale. Joshi added that the government and IISc would continue supporting young innovators with mentoring beyond the competition itself.

Innovation Must Serve Ordinary People

The minister outlined a clear guiding philosophy for the challenge — that innovation must be anchored in the spirit of 'Seva' (service) and directed at solving real problems faced by ordinary citizens, particularly the poor, farmers, and labourers.

'We did innovation, we did everything, but for the common person, who is having real need, you should try to understand them, their problems, and that problem has to be solved. That is the intention,' Joshi said. This framing positions grassroots problem-solving — rather than commercial scale — as the primary metric for success.

India's Startup Growth: Key Numbers

Joshi highlighted the dramatic expansion of India's startup ecosystem over the past decade. The number of recognised startups has surged from approximately 360 in 2014 to roughly 2.4 lakh today, making India the world's third-largest startup ecosystem. Notably, nearly half of these startups are based in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, signalling a geographic democratisation of entrepreneurship beyond the traditional tech hubs.

India's Global Innovation Index ranking has also improved sharply, climbing from 81st in 2015 to 38th currently. The country has filed more than one lakh patents over the last 10 years, compared to around 4,200 in 2013-14 — a more than twenty-fold increase.

BRICS Showcase and Global Visibility

Joshi also recalled the participation of Indian startups at the recent BRICS summit, where 120 startups displayed their innovations at Bharat Mandapam and received direct interaction with leaders from BRICS nations. He said this kind of global visibility was essential for young entrepreneurs to understand the scale at which their ideas could eventually operate.

National Repository and the Viksit Bharat Vision

In a concrete institutional proposal, Joshi suggested creating a national repository through the Seva First Innovation Challenge website, where promising ideas that do not win immediate prizes could still remain accessible for future mentoring and large-scale adoption.

Linking the initiative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of 'Viksit Bharat', Joshi told participants that young minds would be central to India's development trajectory over the next two decades. 'The future is yours. Future of the world is in India, and that future belongs to you,' he said. How effectively the innovation ecosystem converts this rhetoric into structured mentorship pipelines remains the critical question going forward.