Learn from France to handle failures: Ashwini Vaishnaw to startups

Paris: Indian startups should adopt the French way of thinking to handle failures, which will help them develop robust products, Union Minister for IT and Telecom Ashwini Vaishnaw said here on Wednesday. While inaugurating India pavilion at technology exhibition Vivatech, Vaishnaw said the combination of billions of smartphones, billions of bank accounts and billion plus digital identities is enabling creation of unique use cases for technology development in India.

India has been declared the country of the year at Vivatech.

"One thing that...you should take away from here (France) is the way of thinking. That way of thinking basically teaches how to prepare for the failure cases. We always think of use cases. The French way of thinking is how to prepare for the failure cases. What can fail, what else can fail, what else can fail? If you learn that, then your products will be very robust," Vaishnaw said.


He said that the scale that India offers is not available in any other part of the world.

"If you look at many of the government programmes, under the Prime Minister's leadership, many of the government programmes are today born digital. The UPI is a very classic example. The next example...which can be as big as UPI or maybe even bigger is going to be the health mission," Vaishnaw said.

He said that many startups have already started connecting with the national health mission. Around 65 startups from India are participating in Vivatech 2022 with government support.

Atal Innovation Mission, mission director, Chintan Vaishnav said:"Indian startup ecosystem has been growing very fast. It has been innovating at rapid pace and now we have over 100 unicorns which reflect the scale and recognition of Indian ecosystems. Our objective of participating in Vivatech is to showcase Indian startups are solving global problems and innovating for the world."