Amitabh Kant, Secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), is the busiest man at the Make in India event here, speaking to media persons and foreign investors, and managing the various programmes. Kant, said to be the brain behind the Centre’s Start-up India initiative, spoke to BusinessLine on the country becoming the world’s most preferred manufacturing and start-up destination.

What is the Centre doing to bring down manufacturing costs?

India is becoming a cost-competitive nation. The challenge is not only manufacturing…we need to do innovation. We must do design. We must push for growth. And therefore, in all these areas, India must become strong. We are in a young globalised world. We need to become a competitive nation. Therefore the focus is on productivity and reducing the hurdles so that India becomes a very easy country to do business with.

Which are the sectors that have attracted the most investments?

Of all the 14 sectors, defence has bagged the highest amount of investments, followed by railways and consumer goods.

What kind of assurances is the business community asking for doing business in India?

Ease of doing business. We have opened up defence, railways, consumer, e-commerce, insurance, pension funds. All this will help in ease of doing business.

All the States are having their respective investment seminars. How do you see this competition?

It is an excellent competition and this is the best way to push reforms. We need to create a sense of competition.

What are some concerns being raised by the companies that have participated in the event?

Individual companies will have some individual issues. The job of Invest India is to look after individual problems and sort them out across ministries and across States. And that is why Invest India is the new arm of the Government of India. All these issues are being brought forward to be resolved. Invest India has built a team of young people and their job is only to interact with investors and solve legitimate problems.

Ratan Tata today said that we need more research centres for innovation and look beyond IITs. Has the Centre taken any initiative?

That is the main agenda of the Start-up India initiative. We have announced 500 tinkering labs. These will become the agents of incubation, 3D printing, robots and they will bring in a new culture of change in India.

What kind of funds are being allocated for these labs?

Over ₹1,000 crore has already been invested towards this.

What kind of announcements can we expect in the Budget for the start-up sector?

The Prime Minister has already made several announcements. We expect a few of them to getting fulfilled in the Budget.

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