Start-up heads to share ideas with PM

More than 200 young entrepreneurs and heads of startups from across the country will on Thursday present their ideas to PM Narendra Modi on how the private-government sectors can partner to “enable innovation, job creation and income enhancement.”

A similar interaction will take place between Modi and 213 young CEOs next Tuesday in New Delhi. The meetings — under the programme Champions of Change: Transforming India through G2B partnership — are aimed at taking forward Modi’s idea of a “New India by 2022” that the PM underlined in his August 15 speech.

The deliberation will results in policy tweaks and wherever necessary “legislative changes” to make the private sector a partner in delivering “inclusive growth and development,” sources said.

A top source at the government think tank NITI Aayog said the PM will spend nearly four hours at the session on Thursday with different groups of business heads. The groups have been working on suggestions in key areas to enable inclusive growth and development — Make in India, cities of tomorrow, worldclass infrastructure, doubling farmers’ income and reforming the finance sector. The groups will also interact with at least a dozen cabinet members over dinner on Wednesday. NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant was tasked by Modi with reaching out to the business leaders early in August, sources said.

“We divided these business heads into six groups of 30-35 each depending on the core areas they wanted to contribute their ideas in. These groups have been working with each other and exchanging ideas through emails and WhatsApp groups for 10 days before coming together for the deliberations,” an official at NITI involved in the programme said.

“The main ideas of every group have been distilled into a synopsis. The groups will present their ideas in their discussions with the Prime Minister directly.”

In his Independence Day speech, Modi said, “we are nurturing our youngsters to be job creators and not job seekers.” The opposition has repeatedly attacked the government for jobless growth.