{"id":804411,"date":"2026-05-18T05:41:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T05:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/804411\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T05:41:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T05:41:16","slug":"one-in-four-startups-incubated-at-iit-madras-has-a-woman-co-founder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/804411\/","title":{"rendered":"One in four startups incubated at IIT Madras has a woman co-founder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tamaswati<\/p>\n

\n Tamaswati Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer, IITM Incubation Cell
\n | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT\n <\/p>\n

Of the 567 startups incubated under IIT Madras\u2019 ambitious \u201c100 Startups a Year\u201d mission, 25% have women co-founders \u2014 indicating a growing push towards diversity and inclusive entrepreneurship in India\u2019s deep-tech and startup landscape. \u201cThe 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,\u201d Tamaswati Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer, IITM Incubation Cell (IITMIC), said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor 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,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n

Firms that have been incubated under the \u201c100 Startups a Year\u201d 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\u2019s School of Innovation & Entrepreneurship. \u201cIn last two financial years, over \u20b920 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 \u20b915\u201320 lakh in early-stage grant support,\u201d she pointed out.<\/p>\n

To a query on how many startups that were incubated last year failed to survive, she said: \u201cSix 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When asked whether this momentum will continue over the years, Ms. Ghosh said, \u201cIncubating 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 including the North Eastern states, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi-Maharashtra belt, Odisha, and the southern states.<\/p>\n

Ms. Ghosh explained that a key highlight of this year\u2019s Startup Shatam milestone is the\u00a0increasing maturity of startups\u00a0entering the ecosystem \u2013 including a growing number of revenue-generating startups, startups that have\u00a0raised external funding (seed to pre-Series A stage), and those founded by\u00a0serial entrepreneurs (second or third ventures). \u201cThis trend marks a shift from majorly early\/product development-stage incubation to a more\u00a0balanced portfolio of early-stage and market-ready startups, strengthening the overall commercial depth of the ecosystem,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In FY26 alone, IITMIC received over 1,200 applications for incubation from across India, from which 112 startups were selected. \u201cThe 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 \u2014 often aligned with national or global technology priorities \u2014 and who are willing to work closely with us to build and scale their ventures for long-term impact,\u201d Ms.Ghosh said.<\/p>\n

Published – May 17, 2026 12:23 am IST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tamaswati Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer, IITM Incubation Cell | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT Of the 567 startups incubated…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":804412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[16],"tags":[327505,64,607,39299,327507,327506,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-804411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-100-startups-a-year-mission","tag-business","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-iit-madras","tag-iitm-incubation-cell","tag-startup-shatam","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116593982762875330","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}