Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution and Textiles, today said the next Textile sector Unicorn should come from the ICT. Addressing the e-Summit 2022 of the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai on Atmanirbhar Renaissance, he called upon the ICT students to take the leadership in Tex-preneurship, the Textiles sector entrepreneurship.

Shri Goyal said the ICT has one of India’s best Fibres & Textile technology department in the country. The ICT has a distinguished alumni like Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, Indravadan Modi of Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Nilesh Gupta of Lupin Limited and Ashwin Dani of Asian Paints, he added.  

“They have played an important role in making India Aatmanirbhar, particularly in the Chemicals and Pharma sectors. It’s unbelievable how one institute can shape a whole sector. In fact, in some sense, the ICT is to the Chemicals industry what very highly reputed Ivy league colleges are to the technology world or management world across nations. And I do believe each one of your students has a responsibility to carry this legacy forward!” said Shri Goyal, in his address delivered over video conference.

Quoting John F Kennedy, “One person can make a difference and everyone should try to be that one person”, Shri Goyal said entrepreneurs are best defined as Nation Builders and Change Makers.

Shri Goyal said the Government is working as an enabler and has taken transformational initiatives to promote the Textiles sector, including the PLI, setting up of 7 Mega Textile Parks, launching the National Technical Textiles Mission (NTTM) to position India as global leader in Technical Textiles and 31 projects have been already approved.

Shri Goyal said India is going through the Aatmanirbhar Renaissance.

“We are taking great leaps in innovation, Research & Development is finally being recognised as an important element for developing or progressing the country into the New Age. And I suspect nobody today is satisfied with incremental change, incremental improvement; we are all looking at orbital shift in the way we live in our world,” he said.

Shri Goyal said India has become a global leader in digital transactions within 5 yrs of UPI launch. We have the 3^rd largest Startup ecosystem today, over 65,000 Startups registered in five years, more than 90 Unicorns and lakhs of jobs created by these Startups.

Shri Goyal said the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has said that the current decade is the ‘Tech-ade’ of India, a decade where Technology & Innovation will be the driving force of India and our economy.

“Prime Minister Modi himself is a very firm believer on the power of our youth of the Startups. He has focused on this ecosystem to strengthen innovation, provide opportunities to our young boys and girls, to simplify processes, handhold them through their journey, help provide funding support wherever required or simplification of the regulatory requirements around the Startups, help create incubation centres, the Atal Tinkering Labs are one such experiment which have given phenomenal results, and I do believe, the Industry-Academia partnership is going to define the India of tomorrow,” he said.

Shri Goyal said, as the country celebrates 75^th year of Independence, the destiny of India’s Amrit Kaal is in the hands of the youth.

“It is you who will write the script of the Aatmanirbhar Renaissance, Government will be a companion in your entrepreneurial journey. ‘Vocal for Local’ & ‘Make In India’ will be a step towards an self-reliant Aatmanirbhar Bharat”, he said.

Quoting Bharat Ratna M Vishwesaraiya, who played a key role in founding of ICT, “Remember, your work may be only to sweep a railway crossing, but it is your duty to keep it so clean that no other crossing in the world is as clean as yours”, Shri Goyal said we need businesses to improve their product cycles, innovate future ready solutions and continuously focus on Business process Re-engineering.

“Today, India is confident and yet dissatisfied! It is a good thing to be dissatisfied, because a satisfied individual can never bring transformation, can never bring change. We need hunger, we need fire in the belly to be able to do something, to be able to bring about some extraordinary achievement,” he said.

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AM/MS/PK