National Entrepreneurship Day 2026: 2.62 Lakh Startups

National Entrepreneurship Day is marked in India on 9 November. That date was picked because the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship came into being on 9 November 2014. A backgrounder released on the day placed enterprise at the centre of the Viksit Bharat @ 2047 goal, pointing out that close to 65% of the people of this country are below the age of 35.

How wide the startup base has grown

Startups carrying recognition from the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade numbered fewer than 500 in the year 2014. That count now stands at 2.62 lakh, which places India third among startup ecosystems worldwide. Such firms are now found in every State and Union Territory, and on 31 March 2026 the leaders on both count and direct employment were Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Gujarat.

• Jobs traced to these firms crossed 25 lakh by October 2026.
• Fresh recognitions climbed 51.6% in 2025-26 against the year before it, and direct jobs went up 36.1%.
• A single-year high of over 55,200 recognitions was touched in 2025-26, the best since 2016.
• Women hold a directorship or a partnership in over 1.07 lakh recognised startups, roughly 48% of them all.
• Cities outside the metros account for 52% of the recognised startups.

The schemes behind the figures

A second Fund of Funds, notified in April 2026 with its own corpus of 10,000 crore rupees, is aimed at deep-tech ventures, inventive manufacturing and firms at an early growth stage. Under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the MeitY Startup Hub backs 6,149 startups, 518 incubators and 329 laboratories, while TIDE 2.0 works through 51 incubators and GENESIS, with an outlay of 490 crore rupees, aims to lift about 1,600 technology ventures in smaller cities.

Reach beyond the big cities

The NIDHI umbrella of the Department of Science and Technology has backed over 12,000 startups and more than 200 Technology Business Incubators, generating over 1,30,000 jobs. ASPIRE has cleared 109 Livelihood Business Incubators in rural pockets. PMEGP, run by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, supports projects of up to 50 lakh rupees in manufacturing and 20 lakh rupees in services. In rural India the Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme had supported 4.32 lakh enterprises by June 2026, about 86% of them run by people from SC, ST, OBC and minority communities.