At Startup Mahakumbh 2025 in New Delhi on April 3, Union Minister Piyush Goyal asked whether India was settling for low-paying gig jobs while China raced ahead in deep-tech innovation.
Piyush Goyal questions whether India should be 'happy being delivery boys and girls'
“Should we aspire to be, or are we going to be happy being delivery boys and girls?” he questioned.
Comparing India’s startup ecosystem with China’s, the Minister claimed that India’s startup space was too focused on food delivery and gig work.
“What are India startups of today—we are focused on food delivery apps, turning unemployed youth into cheap labour so the rich can get their meals without moving out of their house,” Goyal remarked.
“Against that, what do Chinese startups do—work on developing electric mobility, battery technology, and with that they are today dominating the electric mobility ecosystem.”
Though India is currently the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, Goyal said that scale alone wasn’t enough. “We are very proud of what India has done but are we the best in the world as yet? Not yet.”
“Dukaandari ka hi kaam karna hai ya one of scale, to make a mark in the world?” he asked entrepreneurs to think beyond short-term business models and work toward global technological leadership.
Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha responded to Goyal’s ‘delivery boy’ jibe by defending consumer internet startups and highlighting their significant contributions to employment, economic growth, and technological advancement.
“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,” Palicha wrote on X.
He explained, “Using our example, the reality is this: there are almost 1.5 Lakh real people who are earning livelihoods on Zepto today - a company that did not exist 3.5 years ago. ₹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.”
The Zepto boss argued that India has its own large-scale foundational AI model because we still haven't built great internet companies.
Most technology-led innovation over the past 2 decades has originated from consumer internet companies.
“Who scaled cloud computing? Amazon (originally a consumer internet company). Who are the big players in AI today? Facebook, Google, Alibaba, Tencent etc. (all started as consumer internet companies),” he reasoned.
According to Palicha, consumer internet companies drive this innovation because they have the best data, talent, and capital to put behind it.
He further urged that India needs to build great local champions on the internet that are generating hundreds of millions of dollars in FCF first, if we ever want to get a piece of great technology revolutions.
“The startup ecosystem, the government, and the owners of large pools of Indian capital need to actively support the creation of these local champions, not pull down the teams that are trying hard to get there,” Palicha claimed.
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