CHENNAI: The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) on Monday informed that it has developed India’s first information platform on incubators and accelerators.

“The platform, developed in partnership with YNOS, an IIT Madras-incubated startup, contains comprehensive information on incubators and accelerators, which play an important role in helping startups navigate an uncertain entrepreneurial ecosystem,” said a release from IIT-Madras.

While India had about 1,000 active incubators, until now, the information about them was scattered and not easily available in a single location. “Entrepreneurs spend a lot of time and effort to identify the incubator most suitable for their start-up. The platform developed by CREST addresses this pain-point and helps the startup founders to identify, compare and analyse incubators very easily,” added the press note.

Called ‘Incubators’, this AI-powered platform will help startup founders identify other incubators and accelerators across the country and shortlist the one that best fits their requirements, it added.

Incubation is a very critical phase in the startup life-cycle. Choosing the right incubator can significantly contribute to the success of the start-up in the subsequent years.

“The platform will no doubt benefit incubators too in many ways. Being a neutral platform, it gives an opportunity to incubators to get the attention of start-up founders, policy makers, and investors and showcase the strengths of their incubation centres. The managers of the incubation centres can also use this to benchmark their facilities with other incubators and constantly achieve higher levels of performance,” opined Jayesh Ranjan, IT secretary to Telangana government.

This gives an opportunity to incubators to get the attention of start-up founders, policy makers, and investors and showcase the strengths of their incubation centres

— Jayesh Ranjan, IT secretary to Telangana govt