Piyush Goyal

Some Lesser Known Facts About Piyush Goyal

• Piyush Goyal was a very bright student during his younger days. He was the all-India second rank holder in his CA exam.

• While his father, Ved Prakash, served as the BJP treasurer, his mother, Chandrakanta, served as a member of the Maharashtra legislative assembly. The former also took charge as the Union Minister for shipping in the Vajpayee government.

• Before entering the field of politics, Goyal was a well-known investment banker. In fact, he was appointed as the Director (government nominee) twice for Public Sector Banks, like Bank of Baroda (2001-2004) and SBI (2004-2008).

• A philanthropist at heart, he, along with his wife, Seema, has been a part of a number of social-welfare programs. The NGOs, with which he primarily works, aim at providing free education to the lower sections of the society and the physically disabled.

• During the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, Goyal played an integral part in carrying out BJP’s advertising campaigns.

• He was the minister-in-waiting for the then President of the United States, Barack Obama, during the latter’s India visit in January 2015.

• As the Minister of State with Independent Charge for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy, he had reportedly electrified 13,134 villages out of total 18,452 by April 2017.

• To help revive debt-ridden power DISCOMS in the country, Goyal launched the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) in 2015. In addition, under his tenure, the government’s target of generating 20,000 MW of solar power by 2022 was revised to 1,00,000 MW (100 GW).

• Goyal has participated in a number of leadership programs at renowned universities, like Yale University (2011), Oxford University (2012) and Princeton University (2013).

• In April 2025, during a startup event, Goyal criticised the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India and urged the Indian startups to focus beyond grocery and food delivery and lay emphasis on making semiconductors and work on developing AI. He asked the startups if they were content with “shopkeeping” and said,
  

  Do we have to make ice cream or chips? Dukaandari hi karna hai? (Do we want to just sell things)?”