“Change of mindset and exploration of regional resources are the key to StartUps in Jammu & Kashmir,” said the union minister Dr Jitendra Singh on Sunday while addressing the valedictory function of the 2-day National StartUp Conference RASE 2024 at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) at Srinagar.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, the StartUp movement in India has picked up in a big way in the last one decade and the credit for this primarily goes to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who gave a call ‘Start-up India Stand-up India.’

At that time, he recalled, the number of Start-ups in the country was just 350-400 and today it has gone up to 1.5 lakh while India is rated number 3 globally in the StartUps.

Somehow, in the earlier years the StartUp movement did not catch up with an equal pace in this part of the country.

He said, this has also been so because of the fact that in some of the states and UTs like Jammu & Kashmir, for several decades government jobs have been the main  source of livelihood and that has conditioned the mindset of the youngsters as well as the parents.

It is, therefore, important to create awareness that employment does not mean only government jobs  and that some of the Start-up avenues may be more lucrative compared to the salaried government job, he said.

Emphasising the need to explore the regional resources, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, somehow the mindset gets stuck up with IT when we talk of Start-ups whereas in a region like Jammu & Kashmir the agriculture sector should be the main area of Start-ups.

Citing the example of Aroma Mission, he said, the Purple Revolution was born from small towns of Bhaderwah and Gulmarg, and is now being talked about countrywide while the Purple Revolution Tableau was also displayed on 26 January parade at New Delhi.

He said, nearly 5000 youngsters have taken up lavender farming as agri Start-ups and  are making handsome income. Encouraged by them, he said, some of the youngsters working in the corporate sector have also left their job and turned to lavender farming.

The success of the aroma mission is vindicated from the fact that the example of J&K is also now being emulated by Uttarakhan, Himachal Pradesh and some of the Northeastern States, he added.

As far as J&K is concerned, Dr Jitendra Singh said, it could be possible to explore the areas of agri Start-ups also in the floriculture sector for which the CSIR has started a floriculture mission. He also referred to handcraft horticulture and textile Start-ups as rich domains of J&K.

He said one of the important catalysts for startup success was a close integration between academia, research, industry and for this he called upon the various research institutes as well as the industrial agencies to come together on a single platform.

He said, to begin with, the different institutions in J&K ranging from CSIR, IIT, IIM, AIIMS, SKIMS, SKUAST, NIT, Government Medical Colleges, could come together for joint StartUp  endeavours.

Dr Jitendra Singh also reaffirmed the Ministry of Science and Technology’s commitment to supporting StartUps.