Ecosystem Builders in India: what the data can count

LabelNest Research Ecosystem builders in India  /  Volume 2 of 3 Light / dark Research series  /  Volume 2 Ecosystem builders in India: what the data can count, and what it cannot yet show A data-led account of India's incubators, accelerators and venture studios, from one source, the LabelNest Atlas, and of what that source cannot yet show. Atlas records 23 Oct 2026 Official figures As dated in each chapter Series Volume 2 of 3 Version 1.0 At a glance Five numbers from the Atlas 1,570 builders in India a lower bound Universe (Chapter 2) 24% of builders have any start-up linked 373 builders (Chapter 4) 3% of programmes record a cohort size 72 of 2,199 (Chapter 3) 4% of builders have a named funder 60 builders (Chapter 7) 2 profiles claimed by the builder of 1,570 (Chapter 8) Source: LabelNest Atlas, data date 23 Oct 2026. Details and sources in Chapters 2 to 8. Five findings Each is developed in a chapter 1 The universe. Atlas holds 1,570 builders in India, which is a lower bound because no official total exists. Four in five are incubators, and universities host the largest group where the host is known (Chapter 2). Chapter 2 2 Place. Fifteen states hold 89% of builders and 92.7% of DPIIT-recognised start-ups. Among those states, recognised start-ups per builder run from 83 (Andhra Pradesh) to 307 (Bihar), a ratio that says nothing about quality (Chapter 2). Chapter 2 3 Start-ups. Only 373 builders (24%) have any start-up linked, 5,631 start-ups in all. For none of them does Atlas know what happened next (Chapters 4 and 6). Chapters 4 and 6 4 Programmes. Atlas holds 2,199 programme records for 994 builders. Cohort size is recorded on 3% of them and a cohort start date on fewer than 1%, so what running a programme involves cannot yet be described (Chapter 3). Chapter 3 5 Funding and claims. A named funder is recorded for 60 builders (4%), and 2 of 1,570 profiles have been claimed by the builder (Chapters 7 and 8). Chapters 7 and 8 Source: LabelNest Atlas (23 Oct 2026). Contents Twelve chapters, appendices and Part B 0 About this report 1 The policy backdrop 2 The universe 3 What they run 4 Who they back 5 The measurement gap 6 From cohort to capital 7 Who funds them 8 The profiles 9 India among the world's builders 10 What good reporting looks like 11 Recommendations 12 What is next · What the data does not show A Appendices B Part B: running an ecosystem builder Chapter 0 of 12 Front matter This report counts and describes India's incubators, accelerators and venture studios, using one source, the LabelNest Atlas, and says plainly what that source cannot show. Version 1.0 · Data date: LabelNest Atlas as of 23 October 2026; official figures as dated in each chapter . What counts as a builder. An incubator, an accelerator or a venture studio, held as one record per organisation, with working tests in Appendix A. This report covers builders in India. Atlas holds 506 further records for other countries or with no country, and they are out of scope except in chapter 9, which sets India beside what other places count. Method. Every figure comes from a query on Atlas or from an official publication stored in Atlas with its source link. A lower bound ("750+") is reported as "at least". A field that was derived and not read from a page is flagged, as with institutional alignment in Chapter 2. How the figures were produced. Each figure was produced by a query and recomputed by LabelNest against its stored source. Any correction is logged in Appendix E. Our interest. LabelNest sells software to ecosystem builders. Part B, after the appendices, describes four of its products, Atlas, Orbit, Ascent and Connect, and gives LabelNest's own view; the findings in chapters 1 to 12 do not depend on it. What this report does not do. It does not rank builders, because the data is too thin to rank fairly. It does not report outcomes for individual builders. It does not claim a survival rate, because none is published. The limits are set out together in the section that follows Chapter 8. How to read the numbers A share is a share of what Atlas holds, not of the whole ecosystem. A blank field means "not found", not zero. Government departments and schemes that appear in scheme lists are counted as records but read better as funders or schemes. Claim or correct. A builder claims its page by verifying its web domain in Orbit. A correction to any figure goes to the address in Chapter 12 and is logged in Appendix E. Disclaimer. This report is data, not advice. See Appendix F. Chapter 1 of 12 The policy backdrop India has no single register of incubators. Each ministry counts its own, the counts overlap, and they cannot be added up. Key figure 219 incubators selected under the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, one of seven central counts that overlap Scheme data, 31 Mar 2026 The table shows the main central schemes as stored in Atlas, each with the figure, its date and the page it came from. Scheme What is counted Count As of Approved outlay (INR crore) Startup India Seed Fund Scheme Incubators selected 219 31 Mar 2026 945 DST NIDHI (NSTEDB) Technology business incubators backed (at least) 175 15 Jan 2026 not stored ASPIRE (MSME) Local business incubators approved 109 16 Dec 2025 194.87 Atal Innovation Mission Atal Incubation Centres operational 72 31 Dec 2025 not stored BIRAC BioNEST Bio-incubators (site counter) 74 1 Oct 2026 not stored MeitY TIDE 2.0 Incubators supported 51 19 Dec 2025 264.62 MeitY GENESIS Implementing agencies 65 12 Mar 2025 490 Outlay figures carry no statement date in their sources, so they are as checked on 23 October 2026. The Fund of Funds for Startups is a fund scheme, not an incubator scheme: it has committed to 145 funds against a stated outlay of INR 10,000 crore. Two things follow from the table. The counts overlap. One incubator can be an Atal Incubation Centre, a DST-backed incubator and a seed-fund recipient at once, so the column is not a total. Adding it u