Startup Founders React to Piyush Goyal’s Startup Mahakumbh Speech

Union Minister Piyush Goyal’s address at Startup Mahakumbh drew a sharp flak from several startup founders. From Shaadi.com’s Anupam Mittal to Zepto’s Aadit Palicha, several founders took to LinkedIn and X to express their views on the shortcomings of the Indian startup ecosystem.

While giving a speech Goyal mentioned how Indians are fixated on food delivery and quick commerce convenience comfort over deep-tech. In a slide show “India vs China: Startup Reality Check”, he went to highlight where India lacked and how China is moving ahead in technological innovations with artificial intelligence integration and electric vehicles.

Here’s what startup founders had to say

1. Aadit Palicha

Zepto CEO-Co-founder Aadit Palicha made a bold and elaborate post on LinkedIn. He asked, “Why doesn’t India have its own large-scale foundational AI model?” He answered, “It’s because we still haven’t built great internet companies.” He quoted that Zepto has created over 1,00,000 jobs, while bringing foreign direct investments (FDI) worth billions of dollars. He urges the Indian decision makers to emphasise on consumer internet companies as they have been a testament of success in the past. By giving the examples from Amazon, Facebook and Google he stressed on the need to diversify the Indian economy and capital markets.

2. Anupam Mittal

On his LinkedIn post the founder said, “In the last few months I have met a few deep-tech cos that have absolutely blown me away. From AI & space-tech to material science, Indian entrepreneurs are ready to take on the world. But capital & the eco-system for growth & commercialization are severely lacking. Founders can do most things but not EVERYTHING”

While showing his faith in the Indian startup ecosystem, he criticised networking events calling it an “absolute waste.” He said, “Conferences & Networking events? Usually an absolute waste of time, unless you are in sales. Sometimes the best networking move is to stop networking”.

3. Shobhit Bakliwal

Taking to X, Shobhit Bakliwal shared Piyush Goyal’s video at the Startup Mahakumbh 2025 from another user on X. Agreeing with the user’s post which said “I don’t completely agree. Startups like Zerodha, Zoho, Akshaya Kalpa, Big Basket, Zomato, Paytm, Jio Solve real problems of Indians. If Govt does not focus on employment & upskilling, Industry leaders have to do it. Delivery companies have given jobs to thousands, which needs to be Enhanced by Government” as a reply to Goyal’s comments.