Bengaluru: The government’s initiative to establish 30 incubators in educational institutions under the Startup India programme has enabled India to surpass Israel as the country with the third highest number of start-up incubators and accelerators.
India now has 140 such institutions, ahead of Israel’s 130, says a report by IT industry body Nasscom and consulting firm Zinnov. India added 40 new incubators-accelerators in 2016. China and the US have the highest numbers.
Incubators and accelerators perform the critical function of giving founders clear direction and advice on what is working and what is not. Some accelerators also help startups to find customers and funding. The US has more than 1,500 incubators-accelerators.
“Our aim was not to create billion-dollar valuations, but build remarkable companies that solve problems,” Sangeeta Gupta, Senior Vice President at Nasscom, told.
Nasscom too incubates start-ups through its Startup Warehouses in different cities. “The Indian start-up ecosystem is at a growing stage, where accelerators and incubators are also maturing along with the ecosystem,” Gupta said.
The report said that more than 50 per cent of the institutions were outside the metro cities, thus helping start-ups to be created and nurtured across the country. The report contrasted this with the UK, where 60% of the institutions were in London. “Some 66 per cent of the incubators established in 2016 were in tier 2 and 3 towns,” Gupta said.
Around 50% of the incubators are in academic institutions, like IIT-Madras’ Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) or IIM-Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE). Around 10 per cent of the incubators and accelerators are supported by corporates like PayPal, Target, SAP Labs, Cisco, Microsoft and Airbus. Government supported institutions include Kochi’s SmartCity, T-Hub of Telangana and Nasscom’s Warehouses.
Source: Times of India
