Prince Fahad bin Mansour represents Saudi Arabia at G20’s Startup20 India has the world’s third largest startup ecosystem NEW DELHI: India expects promising exchanges with the Middle East in the startup ecosystem, the chief of Startup20 said on Saturday, after consultations with Saudi Arabia’s representative to the G20 engagement group. Startup20 is one of 11 official networking groups of the Group of 20 largest economies. It was initiated under India’s G20 presidency this year, and aims to help implement policies that support startups, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem builders for their sustainable growth in member countries. The engagement group is composed of representatives from various countries. Saudi Arabia — the only Middle Eastern member of G20 — is represented by Prince Fahad bin Mansour Al-Saud, the chair of the board of directors of the Saudi Entrepreneurship Vision. The group’s delegates met in Goa last week to produce its recommendations and policy directives. The meeting was also attended by Oman, on India’s special invitation as the G20 host. “The India-Middle East exchange, especially between their startup ecosystems, holds much promise,” Startup20 chair, Dr. Chintan Vaishnav, told Arab News. “India has the world’s third largest startup ecosystem with close to 100,000 startups and 115 unicorns. The Middle East is both building a vibrant ecosystem as well as progressively investing in startups. There are synergies between the two at various levels.” Vaishnav also discussed with Prince Fahad how to advance this collaboration. “Prince Fahad and I, on behalf of Startup20, discussed how to make this movement grow exponentially and make it an ongoing feature of the G20 architecture going forward,” he said. After the summit, Prince Fahad told local media he was there to learn from the experiences of others. “We have had a fruitful and smooth discussion that led us to where we are today,” he said. “We believe that the Indians did a great job in putting together the recommendations and giving everyone the chance to collaborate and share their suggestions and recommendations.” During the Goa summit, the engagement group called on G20 nations to invest $1 trillion into the development of startup ecosystems by 2030. Its members also agreed to a policy communique of which key action points were the creation and adoption of a definition framework for startups, creating a network institution to support startups and ecosystem stakeholders across G20, increasing and diversifying access to capital, easing market regulations for startups, and prioritizing the inclusion of underrepresented communities within the startup ecosystem as well as the scaling up startups of global interest.