More than half of the startups participating in The Pitch, VCCircle’s multi-city startup pitching programme, garnered investor interest in its first chapter of the third edition, held in Mumbai last week.
Now in its third year, the programme featured 60 curated startups delivering elevator pitches to a panel of 31 venture capital investors. Designed to facilitate startup discovery, The Pitch aims to connect handpicked early-stage ventures with some of India’s most active VC firms.
The latest edition began its journey in Mumbai, in collaborated with SINE IIT Bombay, Incubation Cell of IIT Bombay. 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.
Following the success of the three-city edition in 2023, the Mumbai chapter saw 635 registrations. Fewer than 10% of applicants were handpicked to present their ventures at the IIT Bombay campus, where the ratio stood at around one investor for every two startups.
In comparison, the previous chapter in Noida saw 521 startups register, with 52 selected to pitch.
Participating investors at the Mumbai event included Lightbox, Thinkuvate, 100X.VC, Chiratae Ventures, Fireside Ventures, Equanimity Investments, Aavishkaar Capital, Eight Roads Ventures, Sorin Investments, Sunicon, Misfits, Artha99, Spiral Ventures, Chanakya VC, IVY Growth Associates, 247VC, Mela Ventures, and Hinduja Group.
Around 55% of participating startups received investor interest for potential follow-up discussions. The 60 startups covered a wide range of sub-sectors, with nine out of 10 startups being bootstrapped and the rest having angel or seed-stage funding.
Startups such as Ingredientz, Doori, Nuvanta NextGen, The Life, TrackR, Docked, Therhappi, Spotbot, Vaidyog, Freedoctor, Healppy, Fit My City, Next Archer, and SarthhakAI were among those that pitched.
In terms of business model, 26% of the startups were B2B ventures, 23% focused on B2C, and the remainder targeted both segments.
Over a quarter of the startups hailed from Maharashtra, with Mumbai being the dominant hub. Other contributing cities included Hyderabad, Thane, Pune, and Bengaluru, with the latter three each making up around 3% of the participants. Two-thirds of the startups came from cities beyond these primary hubs.