At the ongoing 108th Indian Science Congress (ISC) in Nagpur, from 3 to 7 January 2023, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Professor Ajay K Sood laid emphasis on the need to push deep-tech startup sector in India.

"While India has emerged as the third largest ecosystem for startups globally and the deep tech startup landscape in India has seen rapid growth, there is still space to boost it up specifically in areas like consumer technology, automotive, media and entertainment, agri-tech, energy utilities, and cyber security", said Prof Sood.

He also noted that India is among the top three nations in the world in terms of the number of PhDs.

"While the number of PhDs are increasing in India, the country's share in the top 1% of published research is less. India needs to focus on impactful science, and not just derivative science", he said.

He further said that PhDs need not continue in the academic space throughout their career. "Our mindset has been that if you have done PhD you can only become a professor. This is not a sustainable way. Further growth of the startup sector, particularly deep-tech, can provide numerous job opportunties to PhDs in the industry", said Prof Sood while interacting with BioSpectrum.