Author: Christian Kurzydlowski, Toronto.
Global strategic considerations are fluid and ever changing. India’s geography and location position it at the nexus of global supply chains and powerful state and non-state actors. It needs every advantage at its disposal to compete, defend, grow and trade.
India will have to balance pressure from the United States, a key partner in the Indo-Pacific initiative for maritime security, to counter Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea. In return, the United States acts as guarantor against Chinese threats to India’s land borders and Chinese engagement with Pakistan. India will also have to balance its relationship with Russia, considering India’s tilt toward the United States and Russia’s strategic focus on its relationship with China.
But India has space to manoeuvre. Among the main factors driving the scope and scale of India’s economic change is its start-up ecosystem. From a defence point of view, India’s start-up ecosystem, in particular its unicorns and information technology (IT) sector, provides it with options.
Unicorns are start-ups valued at over US$1 billion and in 2021 India added forty-four unicorns, doubling its unicorn size to 83 with a total valuation of US$296 billion. While Indian start-ups come from a variety of different industries, IT services have been its main growth engine, making up 8 per cent (US$16 billion) of India’s total GDP in 2021.
Buoyed by a long tradition of IT engagement, innovation and the rise...
Read Full Story: https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2022/05/18/leveraging-indias-start-up-ecosystem-as-a-defence-strategy/
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