Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Ashwini Vaishnaw to headline ET Startup Awards on October 31 in Bengaluru

Union minister for commerce and industry Piyush Goyal and Union minister for railways, information and broadcasting, electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw will be guests of honour at the 11th edition of The Economic Times Startup Awards to be held in Bengaluru on Friday, October 31.

At the grand ceremony, winners in eight categories will be felicitated with India’s most coveted awards for entrepreneurship as over 350 leaders from the startup and technology ecosystem gather in the country’s tech capital.

Goyal has been spearheading trade negotiations with key partners, such as the US and the European Union, after clinching a high-profile deal with the UK. His ministry is also working on a significant revamp of multiple laws and regulations to improve ease of doing business and strengthen India’s position as a global manufacturing hub.

Vaishnaw has positioned artificial intelligence as a national priority, leading the IndiaAI Mission to build one of the world’s largest public AI ecosystems. The programme has proposals to deploy over 38,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) of compute capacity and develop Indian-language foundation models. Close to 22,000 GPUs are already live.

He has also pushed for a responsible regulatory framework for AI, emphasising data protection, transparency and ethical use. Earlier this week, the IT ministry under Vaishnaw proposed new rules mandating that all AI-generated or synthetic media, videos, images, audio and text carry clear, permanent labels clearly identifying them as such.

The move underscores India’s bid to balance innovation with accountability as the country scales its AI ambitions.

On-demand home-services company Urban Company was named Startup of the Year, joining an illustrious list of past winners, including Lenskart, Zomato, OfBusiness, Razorpay, Delhivery and Swiggy. Urban Company went public in September.

Ashish Agrawal, managing director at Peak XV Partners, won the Midas Touch award for his early bet on Groww. Minfy Technologies bagged Bootstrap Champ, while Prukalpa Sankar of Atlan was honoured as Woman Ahead.

Qure.ai won Top Innovator, Capillary Technologies took Comeback Kid, Chakr Innovation clinched Social Enterprise, and Nawgati emerged Best on Campus.

The high-powered jury, chaired by Amitabh Kant, India’s former G20 Sherpa and a long-time champion of entrepreneurship, deliberated for over three hours on August 28 to pick this year’s winners. Joining him were Prashanth Prakash (Accel), Kalyan Krishnamurthy (Flipkart Group), Sahil Barua (Delhivery), Ruchi Kalra (OfBusiness and Oxyzo), Ghazal Alagh (Mamaearth), Tarun Mehta (Ather Energy), Harshil Mathur (Razorpay), Faraz Khalid (Noon) and Satyan Gajwani (Times Internet).

The Economic Times Startup Awards 2025 are presented by IDFC First Bank.