India's Startup Boom Lacks Pivotal Role Player - Venture Studios Absent from Scene
In the vibrant and ever-evolving world of Indian startups, venture studios have emerged as a crucial and rapidly growing component, bridging the gaps in execution capability and infrastructure that have long been challenges in the country's startup ecosystem.
A venture studio, in essence, is a startup creation platform that ideates, validates, and builds companies from scratch. They fill the capability void for emerging founders in tier II and tier III cities by providing structured mentorship, startup know-how, and scalable product ecosystems.
One such venture studio is Innovations Venture Studio (IVS), which recently launched a SEBI-registered Category-II Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) to scale its impact. The objective of IVS is to create distributed innovation capacity across India, institutionalising venture building as an asset class, offering Limited Partners (LPs) exposure to curated opportunities in India’s economic heartland.
Manish Khurana, Founder of IVS, states that the studio doesn't chase unicorns but builds durable businesses that solve real problems. IVS has demonstrated its ability to combine execution muscle with long-term capital strategies, as shown through investments in Pioneer Fabricators Pvt Ltd and enabling Cricstudio's global retail expansion.
India's MSMEs contribute nearly 30% of the country's GDP but struggle with digital transformation and growth strategies. Venture studios, with their focus on operational efficiency and strategic mentorship, can provide the handholding necessary to help scale these businesses through productisation, SaaS tools, and operational efficiency models.
The startup scene in India is recognised as the third-largest ecosystem in the world. Entrepreneurial energy is exploding beyond Tier-1 cities, with over 45% of new startups arising from tier II and tier III cities. As India's entrepreneurial ecosystem approaches the vision of Viksit Bharat @2047, venture studios can offer ideation, infrastructure, capital, and execution frameworks, providing a radical solution to India's startup mortality rate by offering end-to-end execution infrastructure.
Indian and global investors are increasingly seeking purpose-aligned returns, and sectors like climate tech, agri-innovation require deep expertise and long gestation. Venture studios, with their structured approach and focus on emerging technologies, are structurally better suited to nurture these complex, high-impact ventures.
IVS partners with various entities to create scalable ventures across sectors such as Climate Tech & Green Energy, MSME Modernisation & Manufacturing 2.0, Deep Tech & Defence, Agri-Innovation & Rural Digitisation, and Culturally Rooted D2C Brands.
At this unique intersection, venture studios can offer a potent combination of ideation, infrastructure, capital, and execution frameworks, playing a pivotal role in accelerating startup success and driving innovation, particularly by enabling entrepreneurs from non-tier-1 cities and underserved sectors to build scalable, investment-ready companies faster and more effectively than traditional models alone.
[1] Big Venture Studio Research 2024 [2] Your Article Source 2023 [3] News Source 2023
- Venture studios, like Innovations Venture Studio (IVS), are not only focusing on creating and scaling businesses in India, but also aim to institutionalize venture building as an asset class, attracting limited partners (LPs) in the process, thus bridging the gap between finance and business.
- Recognizing the potential in emerging sectors such as climate tech, agri-innovation, and deep tech, venture studios with their structured approach and focus on technology can offer purpose-aligned returns to global investors, fostering self-development and improvements in lifestyle through innovative solutions.
- As India's startup scene continues to evolve and expanding beyond tier-1 cities, venture studios providing ideation, infrastructure, capital, and execution frameworks play an essential role in education and self-development of entrepreneurs, thereby reducing the startup mortality rate and driving technology-led growth and development. [1, 2, 3]
