The Pitch, a multi-city startup pitching programme run by VCCircle, saw as many as 52 curated ventures make an elevator pitch to a set of nearly two dozen venture capital investors in its fourth chapter held in Noida last week.
The programme, now in its second year, seeks to facilitate curated startup discovery for VC investors while allowing the entrepreneurs to connect more meaningfully with some of India’s handpicked active early-stage investors. This year the programme started with South India as its first camp where startups congregated at IIT Hyderabad. The event then moved to IIM Calcutta in December 2024, followed by IIT Chennai in January.
The latest chapter of the programme this year, after the resounding success of the three-city edition in 2023, received as many as 521 registrations. Of these, just one in ten applicants were handpicked to make their pitches to VCs at IIM Lucknow’s Noida campus. There were around 20 VCs, making it an investors-to-startup ratio of just over 1:2.
Makia Capital, Entrust Family Office, Navam Capital, Indian Angel Network, Ankur Capital, AdvantEdge, Thinkuvate, Dallas Venture Capital, Kathyawad Ventures, Unnati Ventures India, AccelNovaa, Fluid ventures, Inflexor, Leo Capital, Rukam Capital, AWE Funds, Ankurit Capital, Multi-Act and Sauce VC were some of the investors that joined for the pitching sessions.
Notably, nearly two-thirds (65%) of the startups captured investors’ interest for further potential engagement.
The Noida chapter saw 52 startups straddling all key subsectors participating in the event. Broadly, 85% of the startups pitching to the investors were bootstrapped with the rest already having an angel or seed investor on the cap table.
Over one in three, or around 21, were revenue-earning startups while the rest were pre-revenue stage ventures.
AiProff.ai, Utopian, Xmonies, Scooton, NXTMile Mobility, The House of DoBe, HobFit and quickprism were the already-funded ventures looking to woo new investors to join their cap table.
Unfunded ventures making a pitch included YUVAM, Arth: By Capovex, Sun Zero, gomaterial, Skill Beyond Boundaries, SANDMAN, AjeGo, DAAKIT, Strings Social, SOUL, SnapMenu, Likwid.Ai, ActionSync, ChocolateX, SIMBA, Headlyne, XceliSys, 6ix Hotels, MotionMatics and Preative.
Clipo AI, Diagnomitra, Avasar, Krishibarters.com, JITSY, Broki, Yellow Van, Pickney Bank, Contrect, Fashonir, Bombay Pav Company, VOLTON, SAALAHA, dayTrack, Ekyamm, Bharat Products, Athenian Tech, Skoho, VYRA, Waitkyu, MEDSCORE, Back2Basics Recycler, GetMedJob and PUREXA were the other startups pitching to investors.
In terms of the business model, a third of the total were B2B ventures while B2C ventures comprised a fifth of the total, while around half are targeting both sets of customers.
Notably, nearly half of the startups that pitched were from the Delhi-NCR region with Delhi topping the table comprising 12 of the total, just ahead of home city Noida. Among other key startup hubs, Gurugram and Bengaluru startups comprised 8% each while Mumbai and Chennai represented 6% each of the pitching cohort.
The programme will return with a bigger canvas in the coming financial year.
