Nithin Kamath, Rajan Anandan among rejigged National Startup Advisory Council members

Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal is set to meet the reconstituted National Startup Advisory Council (NSAC) on Tuesday, December 19, according to an official government notification.

The NSAC members have a two-year term and include non-official members from the industry including startup founders and veterans as well as incubators and accelerators.

“Upon completion of two year term of the ‘National Startup Advisory Council’ (NSAC), the Central Government has nominated the non-official members on the National Startup Advisory Council representing various stakeholders such as founders of successful startups, veterans who have grown and scaled companies in India, persons capable of representing interest of investors into startups, persons capable of representing interests of incubators and accelerators, representatives of associations of stakeholders of startups and representatives of industry associations,” the Press Information Bureau (PIB) notification read.

The list announced late Monday includes noted names of the industry such as Nithin Kamath of Zerodha, Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal and Sanjeev Bikchandani of InfoEdge, alongside Rajan Anandan of PeakXV Partners and former TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan.

Notably, the advisory body excludes edtech company BYJU’S top boss Byju Raveendran, ZestMoney co-Founder Lizzie Chapman and Ola's Bhavish Aggarwal.

The edtech platform is in financial troubles and a legal soup nationally and abroad, while ZestMoney recently announced winding down of operations. Ola Electric helmed by Bhavish Aggarwal, on the other hand, is all set for an IPO - two decades by an automaker after Tata Motors.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, Sridhar Vembu of Zoho Corp and Kalaari Capital's Vani Kola alongside Kunal Shah of CRED were also not a part of the council.

Abhiraj Singh Bhal of Urban Company, Saurabh Srivastava of Indian Angel Network and Amit Jain of CarDekho were new entrants in the list.

Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry had constituted the ‘National Startup Advisory Council’ as per the Notification of Startup India in January 2020 to advise the Government on measures needed to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation and startups in the country.