Goyal’s Startup Critique Sparks Industry Heat

After Union Minister Piyush Goyal’s critical remarks at Startup Mahakumbh 2025, Aadit Palicha, CEO and Co-Founder of Zepto, took to LinkedIn to defend the Indian startup ecosystem.

“It is easy to criticise consumer internet startups in India, especially when you compare them to the deep technical excellence being built in US/China,” said the CEO in a social media post.

Aadit Palicha also urged for support to the local companies to foster technological advancements in India.

“ Rs 1,000+ Crores of tax contribution to the government per year, over a billion dollars of FDI brought into the country and hundreds of crores invested in organizing India's backend supply chains (especially for fresh fruits and vegetables). If that isn't a miracle in Indian innovation, I honestly don't know what is”, said the Zepto CEO.

He argued that large AI models in the U.S. and China were enabled by successful consumer tech firms, and India must support its own. Palicha emphasized that innovation often stems from such startups due to their access to data, talent, and capital.

The startup ecosystem, the government, and capital owners in India must work together to support innovation-driven growth”, Palicha wrote on social media.

"Why does India lack a large-scale foundational AI model of its own? Because we still haven't created great internet companies. The majority of technology-led innovation in the last two decades has come from consumer internet companies. Who popularized cloud computing? Amazon (which was first a consumer internet company). Whose turn is it to be the big ones in AI today? Facebook, Google, Alibaba, Tencent, etc (all began as consumer internet companies)", Palicha replied.