India’s rank dropped down to the 23rd spot despite being the 3rd largest start-up

Certain intense infrastructure issues being faced in India which has gradually affected entrepreneurs and start-ups such as the low speed of internet in comparison to most of the other countries as well as frequent power outrage.

Despite the fact that the nation continues to improve its annual Ease of Doing Business ranking, its start-up ecosystem seems to be losing steam. As per the study of the global innovation mapping and research company, StartupBlink which is known for gathering local data of every country to rank their start-up ecosystem on the basis of the quality of start-ups as well as the business environment paired with its quantity too, India has shifted from the 17^th position in 2019 to 23^rd in 2020 out of 100 countries. India which is the third largest ecosystem in regard to the number of technology tart-ups has been ranked even behind ecosystems which were merely emerging such as Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Brazil, etc. The US, the UK and Israel have topped this ranking which China managed to improve its rank by 13 spots to 14^th position this year and Japan got hold of the 21^st spot.

Nevertheless, out of the top 100 stat-up cities, merely four Indian cities got captured. New Delhi-up by three spots to the 15^th position, Bengaluru-down by three spots to the 14^th position, Mumbai-shifted up by seven spots to 22^nd position and Hyderabad-fell drastically from 21 ranks to disappointing 96^th position. Seven cities last year were ranked among the top 100 list versus four this year.

The report in the study urged the government to improve the infrastructure since other countries in the region are continuing to grow rapidly. However what still is a matter of satisfaction to the country is that it manages to attain relatively better ranking in regards to other countries in the Asia-pacific region such as countries like New Zealand-47^th position, Indonesia-54^th position, Thailand-50^th position, Vietnam-59^th position. Neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan were respectively placed at 99,98, 100 and 82.

Ecosystems here at StartupBlink are measured based on the number of start-ups, their business environment and quantity. Their ranking is based on the data from more than 60,000 stat-ups, over 14, 000 coworking spaces,100 global influencers based in various cities. Certain Information partners that globally contribute to the ranking system are Crunchbase, SEMrush as well as some government corporations too. This ranking relies on the way the start-ups have been able to impact the country, number of start-ups and support organizations such as coworking spaces, accelerators, stat-up events as well as technology infrastructure, bureaucracy, red tape etc.

This report arrives amid the Covid phase when start-ups have been struggling under the pandemic impact due to poor demand, squeezed inflow of funding from investors and supply chain disruption. A NASSCOM survey in April has reportedly suggested that about 40 per cent of start-ups are on the verge of shutting down or have already taken a pause in their respective operations for this year. In fact, 70 per cent claimed that survival seems to be at stake with less than three months of runway left in the times when revenues have declined for 90 per cent of more than 250 start-ups surveyed.