Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Shri Piyush Goyal today urged medtech startups to look beyond the domestic market, leverage India’s expanding trade agreements covering nearly 70% of global GDP, and scale affordable innovations to serve both India and the world.

Pfizer has announced the winners of the INDovation Program 2025 edition. The programme selected 14 promising healthtech startups who will receive grants of Rs 60 lakh each and 18 months of other incubation support.The winning startups delivered robust solutions in the fields of Immunisation, NCDs (non-communicable diseases), Brain Health, Oncology and Maternal and Child Health.

India has preferential or zero duty market access to 70% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) through trade agreements and the start-ups should not limit themselves to domestic markets, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said Thursday.

Biotechnology firm Pandorum Technologies has raised $18 million (Rs 163 crore) in a Series B round to advance the clinical development of its therapies that target diseases on the surface of the eye.The Bengaluru-based startup, which operates research facilities in India and the US, said Monday the round was led by Vapi, Gujarat-based Protons Corporate Services Pvt Ltd.Drugmaker Galentic Pharma, stock market investor Ashish Kacholia, Noblevast Advisory, early-stage venture capital firm Avinya Ventures, and the Burman family were among the other investors that joined the round.

Founded in 2023, Sarvam AI is developing full-stack generative AI models designed for India’s linguistic diversity. Led by Dr. Vivek Raghavan and Dr. Pratyush Kumar, the Bengaluru-based company focuses on multilingual LLMs, voice technologies and sovereign AI infrastructure, aiming to deliver scalable, India-centric solutions across sectors.

India’s startup story is no longer just about unicorn valuations or headline-grabbing funding rounds. It is increasingly about the quiet but powerful institutions that shape ideas at their earliest stages-incubators, community innovation centres, mentors, policymakers and investors working together to turn raw innovation into scalable impact. That larger, more structural story came into sharp focus at AIM SUMVAAD, the flagship annual incubator conclave organised by the Atal Innovation Mission under NITI Aayog.

According to the report, India had 890 GenAI startups in the first half of 2025 compared to 240 startups in the year-ago period. Amidst the rising number of startups coming up in the sector, VCs have also turned their attention to these companies.

India’s artificial intelligence startup ecosystem has expanded sharply over the past year, with the number of Generative AI (GenAI) startups more than tripling, according to the Economic Survey 2025–26.The survey found that the number of active GenAI startups rose from about 240 in the first half of calendar year 2024 to over 890 in the first half of calendar year 2025. This rapid rise has made GenAI one of the fastest-growing segments within India’s technology startup ecosystem.

Over the past decade, the Startup India initiative has transformed entrepreneurship from a niche urban phenomenon into a nationwide movement, positioning startups as a central pillar of India’s growth strategy. What began as a bold policy announcement has evolved into one of the world’s largest and most inclusive startup ecosystems, aligned closely with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of “Viksit Bharat 2047-a developed, innovative and self-confident India.

B Capital’s India team remains active and will do more deals in the aritificial intelligence (AI) and AI services space this year, Raj Ganguly, co-founder and co-CEO of B Capital told Moneycontrol in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20.