Zerodha's Nithin Kamath joins Centre's reconstituted startup advisory panel

Kamath said that he was excited to join the council and that India needs to unlock its domestic capital to nurture startups

Nithin Kamath, co-founder and chief executive officer at stock broking platform Zerodha, is now a part of the Centre's National Start-up Advisory Council. Kamath's name was among the 31 new members announced by the Centre on December 18 and has been nominated as a non-official member of the start-up panel.

The panel has been constituted under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

Taking to social media platform X, Kamath said that he was excited to join the council, adding that India needs to unlock its domestic capital to nurture startups.

"More Indians today than ever before are aspiring to be entrepreneurs thanks to government initiatives and messaging, the media coverage of the startup ecosystem, founder success stories, and more. The one thing we need to work on as a nation is to unlock domestic capital for startups/MSMEs. Reduce the dependence on foreign capital and get Indians to back Indian startups. Reduce the dependence on foreign capital and get Indians to back Indian start-ups," he wrote in a post.

Kamath also said that there is a renewed interest among Indian investors to support newer products and the country needs to make use of this opportunity. "Apart from reducing external capital dependency, this could also mean that wealth created from startups stays in India."

He also stated that the time has come for newer products that can be employed by accredited investors to invest in equity or debt in start-ups and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

Non-official members, like Kamath, are appointed to the panel for a term of two years. Other members who have been made part of the council include IIT Kanpur Professor Amitabha Bandyopadhyay, Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association's Karthik Reddy, University of Delhi Professor Yogesh Singh and Invest India's Nivruti Rai, among others.