2 weeks ago
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Of the 567 startups incubated nether IIT Madras’ ambitious “100 Startups a Year” mission, 25% person women co-founders — indicating a increasing propulsion towards diverseness and inclusive entrepreneurship successful India’s deep-tech and startup landscape. “The percent has been consistently implicit 25% successful the past 2 years, which is importantly encouraging for the deep-tech sector, wherever women's practice has traditionally been lower,” Tamaswati Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer, IITM Incubation Cell (IITMIC), said.
“For some Startup Shatam cohorts (Financial Year 2024-2025 and 2025-2026), we person continued to spot beardown information from women founders crossed sectors including healthtech, biotech, AI, sustainability, and agritech,” she noted.
Firms that person been incubated nether the “100 Startups a Year” ngo person besides started raising backing to standard up their ventures. Ms.Ghosh pointed retired that respective startups incubated successful FY2024-25 (part of the archetypal Startup Shatam milestone) person already gone connected to rise outer funding, including angel concern and task capital. They person besides been supported done IITMIC interior grants and CSR-backed programs tally successful collaboration with IITM’s School of Innovation & Entrepreneurship. “In past 2 fiscal years, implicit ₹20 crore successful assistance backing was released to 100 early-stage startups (those incubated successful FY25 and FY26) to enactment merchandise improvement and Go-To-Market (GTM) activities, with startups typically receiving ₹15–20 lakh successful early-stage assistance support,” she pointed out.
To a query connected however galore startups that were incubated past twelvemonth failed to survive, she said: “Six startups from the FY24-25 incubation acceptable person presently paused oregon are winding down operations owed to co-founder incompatibility/issues that could not beryllium resolved, and inability to execute product-market fit.”
When asked whether this momentum volition proceed implicit the years, Ms. Ghosh said, “Incubating implicit 100 startups successful a azygous fiscal year, for 2 consecutive years, is decidedly ambitious. However, it has go sustainable due to the fact that of the extent and maturity of the IIT Madras innovation and deep-tech startup enactment ecosystem, and the nationalist visibility IITMIC has built implicit the years done the occurrence and interaction of our existing portfolio companies.”
Data shows that astir 60% of the 567+ startup founders are outer entrepreneurs (not from IITs), and contiguous the ecosystem has practice from pan-India — including the North Eastern states, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi-Maharashtra belt, Odisha, and the confederate states.
Ms. Ghosh explained that a cardinal item of this year’s Startup Shatam milestone is the increasing maturity of startups entering the ecosystem – including a increasing fig of revenue-generating startups, startups that have raised outer backing (seed to pre-Series A stage), and those founded by serial entrepreneurs (second oregon 3rd ventures). “This inclination marks a displacement from majorly early/product development-stage incubation to a more balanced portfolio of early-stage and market-ready startups, strengthening the wide commercialized extent of the ecosystem,” she said.
In FY26 alone, IITMIC received implicit 1,200 applications for incubation from crossed India, from which 112 startups were selected. “The situation contiguous is not successful attracting startups keen to beryllium portion of the IITM ecosystem, but successful identifying committed founders gathering genuinely differentiated deep-tech solutions — often aligned with nationalist oregon planetary exertion priorities — and who are consenting to enactment intimately with america to physique and standard their ventures for semipermanent impact,” Ms.Ghosh said.
