
New Delhi, Aug. 26 -- Every second startup participating at The Pitch, VCCircle's multi-city startup pitching programme, garnered investor interest in its Ahmedabad chapter of the third edition, held last week.
The Pitch aims to facilitate startup discovery by connecting handpicked early-stage ventures with some of India's most active venture capital firms. The programme, which is now in its third year, featured 54 curated startups delivering elevator pitches to a panel of 18 VC firms.
The latest edition, which commenced at IIT Bombay on June 6, moved to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru last month. The latest chapter took place on August 22 at IIMA Ventures, the startup incubator of IIM Ahmedabad at its new campus.
In the second edition, the first event was held at IIT Hyderabad and subsequently moved to IIM Calcutta in December 2024, followed by sessions at IIT Madras in January and IIM Lucknow's Noida campus in March.
The third chapter of the current edition saw 667 startup registrations, out of which around 8% were handpicked to make elevator pitches last Friday. This was slightly more than the 7% of the 751 registered startups handpicked in the second edition, which was held in Bengaluru.
As many as 25 investors representing 18 investment firms participated at the Ahmedabad event. These included Silicon Road Ventures, Abyro Capital, GVFL, Inflexor Ventures, IIMA Ventures, Signal Ventures, Oister Global, Kathyawad Ventures, Volt VC, Rukam Capital, Anay Ventures, and OTP Ventures.
Of the 54 curated startups that presented their ventures to investors, 50% of them attracted investor interest for follow-up discussions. These ventures belonged to a wide range of sub-sectors, with 91% of the companies having not raised external funding, while the rest had raised funding either in angel, seed, Series A or other rounds.
Some of the startups that participated were Atomo Innovation Pvt Ltd, Emvo, Apeability, Suvansys Pvt Ltd, Wazo Solutions Pvt Ltd, V4L AI, Kuhltherm Private Limited, UXplore Technologies Pvt Ltd, PIVAGA, and 2dev.ai.
In terms of the business model, 22% of the startups that pitched were from the business-to-consumer category, 35% were from business-to-business, and the remaining 43% catered to both segments.
Only 11% of the startups that participated were from Ahmedabad while 17% were from Bengaluru. Delhi and the national capital region and Mumbai comprised 13% and 11% of the participating startups, respectively. The remaining 48% of the startups came from regions beyond these primary hubs.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.