Startup Incubator Surge; South India Leads, Half are in tier 1 Cities: IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore Report

Startup Incubator: The number of incubators in the Indian ecosystem has been on a steady rise, with over 1,100 active incubators in the Indian startup ecosystem, reveals a report jointly presented by Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IITM), Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), Bangalore’s NSRCEL, the startup incubator of the Institute of Management.

The southern region is at the forefront, accounting for 45 per cent of all incubators and has the highest density of incubators.

The report titled ‘India Incubator Kaleidoscope 2024’ reveals that tier 1 cities account for almost half of all incubators, i.e. 48 per cent. Chennai has a high proportion of academic incubators at 82 per cent, while Bengaluru and Gurugram have a high proportion of industry incubators at 71 per cent and 84 per cent, respectively.

According to the report, the incubator density is 0.8 incubators per million population, while countries like the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and China have 8 to 10 incubators per million population. Deep tech sectors like Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML), data analytics, biotech and other sectors have higher incubation rates. All of these have an incubation rate of over 12 per cent and are sought by students, young professionals, female founders and people with modest financial resources.

Despite being fewer in number, incubated startup have won more awards across all major startup awards. The report says that incubated startup is also more actively engaged in the creation of intellectual property-the percentage of incubated start-up publishing patents is almost 5 times higher than non-incubated ones.

While 27.1 per cent of incubated start-up received first-stage funding within a year of incorporation, the percentage was 15.4 per cent for non-incubated ones.

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