A proposed National Entrepreneurship Mission by Shradha Sharma seeks to unify India’s fragmented support systems, aiming to create 10 lakh enterprises and over 36 lakh jobs within five years through integrated schemes, mentorship, and targeted government interventions.
A new policy framework written by Shradha Sharma, founder and chief executive of The Bharat Project, argues that India already has much of the machinery needed to support new founders , but that the system remains too fragmented to deliver at scale. The proposal, framed as a National Entrepreneurship Mission, aims to create 10 lakh enterprises and 30-36 lakh jobs over five years by linking together start-up, MSME, skilling, research and credit schemes that now operate in separate silos.
The blueprint calls for an Entrepreneurship Passport to give founders a single point of access to public support, alongside district-level opportunity maps and a national Idea Bank to help identify viable business ideas. It also proposes assigning a mentor to every publicly funded venture, with government procurement used more deliberately to create early demand. Ministries and public sector companies would be given targets to help entrepreneurs win their first customers, a step the framework sees as essential in a country where access to markets remains one of the biggest barriers to survival.
The timing of the proposal is notable. The Ministry of Rural Development has already launched a National Entrepreneurship Mission under the DAY-NRLM umbrella, focused on rural enterprise promotion, training community resource representatives and expanding support for self-help group members, especially women. Official figures show the ministry has mobilised more than 10 crore women into over 90 lakh self-help groups, while the Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme has supported nearly 4 lakh rural enterprises. That existing base could give a broader mission some traction if the different strands are brought together more effectively.
The plan also reflects a wider policy push to widen India’s entrepreneurial base. TiE has launched Mission 1x10x100, which aims to create one million entrepreneurs over a decade, while government and industry leaders have repeatedly argued that India must build more manufacturers, deep-tech ventures and globally competitive firms. The Bharat Project framework goes further by insisting that success should be measured not just by registrations, but by survival, revenue and formal job creation tracked through GST and EPFO data. It wants at least 6 lakh enterprises still operating and generating revenue by year three, with 60% of them outside metro areas.
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