By Ankita Paul

Copyright republicworld

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) Director Deepak Bagla reflected on how India’s growth story accelerated exponentially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, turning a crisis into a launchpad for innovation and entrepreneurship.Formerly CEO of Invest India and now steering AIM under NITI Aayog, Bagla highlighted how the government’s policy reforms, digital adoption, and resilient entrepreneurs enabled India to emerge as the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem post-COVID, creating over 100 unicorns and attracting more than $100 billion in funding since 2021.In an insightful address at the Republic Business Leadership Conclave, he said, “India went into COVID being the fastest-growing large economy and came out of it as the fastest-growing large economy.”He highlighted how India played an instrumental role to save the world from the challenges the world was facing at that time.”In those 22 months of COVID-19, India ran the world’s largest vaccine programme. India was one of the few countries that developed its own vaccine. India ran the world’s largest medical support programme, supplying medicines to over 135 countries. In March 2020, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was not readily available in India. By July that year, India was exporting PPEs to the entire world. Our Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) made this possible by pivoting their business models,” Bagla said.He continued, “Alongside this, India ran the world’s largest food support programme in history, providing food to 800 million people for two years. India did it. During the same period, India also implemented the world’s largest water sustainability programme, Jal Jeevan Mission, even during the lockdown. While the world was locked down, India was creating opportunities and supporting its people. When COVID started in March 2020, there were 32 million investment accounts; by September 2023, India had 100 million accounts. The world was locked, but India was working, building a platform to fund the growth of a new India. This is the resilience of India.”Bagla further explained how AIM catalyzed this momentum with over 10,000 Atal Tinkering Labs in schools, incubators supporting 5,000+ startups, and collaborations like the India-US iCET initiative, which opened global opportunities at a time when the world was resetting post-pandemic. Bagla credited India’s demographic dividend, combined with digital maturity—demonstrated during COVID through the rapid adoption of digital payments, online healthcare, and edtech—as a unique advantage. However, he cautioned that challenges such as talent retention, intellectual property protection, and deep-tech scaling must be addressed. Calling 2020–2025 India’s “inflection years,” Bagla emphasized that the pandemic didn’t slow India down but instead propelled it onto a faster track toward Viksit Bharat 2047, provided the ecosystem continues to harness AI, sustainability, and public-private collaboration.