Indo-US relationship key to start-up success: Niti Aayog CEO

 Pitching for growth of venture funds to fund start-ups, a top official on Thursday said the relationship between India and the US is critical to making start-ups a success.

"While we have venture funds here, we need them to grow 10x in India... Our objective is that the ecosystem for venture funds grows and expands and we have thousands of venture funds who keep funding start-ups," NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said while addressing a conference on start-ups. Speaking at the conference organised by the US-India Business Council (USIBC), Kant described America as the "centre for all innovations in the world".

"America is a state which accepts failures and it has got the best ecosystem in the world for pushing these and being a great facilitator for young entrepreneurs to succeed in life. There is plenty to learn from the American ecosystem. This relationship between India and the US is very critical to making start-ups a success," he said. Besides, Kant projected India's e-commerce market at about US$ 300 billion by 2024, claiming that the country may have a billion smartphone users by then.

"... The e-commerce which is going to grow and expand still is in fancy of about 25-30 billion. I expect that this is going to grow up to 300 billion by 2024 because India is the only country which by 2024 is going to have a billion smartphones." Kant, however, had earlier said the e-commerce market is likely to grow 10-fold in next five years (by 2020) to reach US$ 100 billion on the back of increasing penetration of Internet, smartphones and spread of digital network in rural areas.

The e-commerce sector stood at around US$ 10 billion as on December 2015.