One in four startups incubated at IIT Madras has a woman co-founder

Of the 567 startups incubated under IIT Madras’ ambitious “100 Startups a Year” mission, 25% have women co-founders — indicating a growing push towards diversity and inclusive entrepreneurship in India’s deep-tech and startup landscape. “The percentage has been consistently over 25% in the last two years, which is significantly encouraging for the deep-tech sector, where women’s representation has traditionally been lower,” Tamaswati Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer, IITM Incubation Cell (IITMIC), said.

“For both Startup Shatam cohorts (Financial Year 2024-2025 and 2025-2026), we have continued to see strong participation from women founders across sectors including healthtech, biotech, AI, sustainability, and agritech,” she noted.

Firms that have been incubated under the “100 Startups a Year” mission have also started raising funding to scale up their ventures. Ms.Ghosh pointed out that several startups incubated in FY2024-25 (part of the first Startup Shatam milestone) have already gone on to raise external funding, including angel investment and venture capital. They have also been supported through IITMIC internal grants and CSR-backed programs run in collaboration with IITM’s School of Innovation & Entrepreneurship. “In last two financial years, over ₹20 crore in grant funding was released to 100 early-stage startups (those incubated in FY25 and FY26) to support product development and Go-To-Market (GTM) activities, with startups typically receiving ₹15–20 lakh in early-stage grant support,” she pointed out.

To a query on how many startups that were incubated last year failed to survive, she said: “Six startups from the FY24-25 incubation set have currently paused or are winding down operations due to co-founder incompatibility/issues that could not be resolved, and inability to achieve product-market fit.”

When asked whether this momentum will continue over the years, Ms. Ghosh said, “Incubating over 100 startups in a single financial year, for two consecutive years, is definitely ambitious. However, it has become sustainable because of the depth and maturity of the IIT Madras innovation and deep-tech startup support ecosystem, and the national visibility IITMIC has built over the years through the success and impact of our existing portfolio companies.”

Data shows that nearly 60% of the 567+ startup founders are external entrepreneurs (not from IITs), and today the ecosystem has representation from pan-India — including the North Eastern states, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi-Maharashtra belt, Odisha, and the southern states.

Ms. Ghosh explained that a key highlight of this year’s Startup Shatam milestone is the increasing maturity of startups entering the ecosystem – including a growing number of revenue-generating startups, startups that have raised external funding (seed to pre-Series A stage), and those founded by serial entrepreneurs (second or third ventures). “This trend marks a shift from majorly early/product development-stage incubation to a more balanced portfolio of early-stage and market-ready startups, strengthening the overall commercial depth of the ecosystem,” she said.

In FY26 alone, IITMIC received over 1,200 applications for incubation from across India, from which 112 startups were selected. “The challenge today is not in attracting startups keen to be part of the IITM ecosystem, but in identifying committed founders building genuinely differentiated deep-tech solutions — often aligned with national or global technology priorities — and who are willing to work closely with us to build and scale their ventures for long-term impact,” Ms.Ghosh said.