Venture Studios Drive Growth and Innovation in India's Startup Ecosystem
India's Startup Revolution Lacking Key Player: Venture Studios
India's startup scene is poised for significant growth, with a new initiative aiming to institutionalise venture building as an asset class. The upcoming AIF, launched by Innovations Venture Studio (IVS), offers Limited Partners (LPs) exposure to curated opportunities in India's economic heartland.
IVS partners with founders, businesses, domain experts, and institutions to create scalable ventures across sectors including Climate Tech & Green Energy, MSME Modernisation & Manufacturing 2.0, Deep Tech & Defence, Agri-Innovation & Rural Digitisation, and Culturally Rooted D2C Brands.
The nation's growth increasingly depends on innovation, digital entrepreneurship, and scalable technology. Recognising this need, IVS invites partnership from State governments and industrial development bodies, family offices and impact-oriented LPs, policy think tanks, incubation partners, and ecosystem builders.
Venture studios play a critical role in the startup ecosystem by combining venture capital funding with operational support, shared resources, and expert mentorship. This model not only provides early-stage startups with financial backing but also offers infrastructure, strategic guidance, and industry expertise that help founders translate innovative ideas into scalable businesses.
One key benefit of venture studios is bridging funding and execution gaps. Many Indian entrepreneurs struggle to access traditional funding and mentorship. Venture studios, such as the recently launched AI-focused venture studio by EaseMyTrip’s co-founder, aim to bridge these gaps by providing hands-on support, reducing reliance on pitch decks or lengthy applications, and accelerating startup growth.
Access to expertise and resources is another significant advantage. Venture studios typically have experienced founders, operators, and investors involved, offering startups expert feedback, validation, and operational assistance. This includes help with market research, product development using AI or no-code tools, user testing, and early customer acquisition, which speeds up the time to market and increases success odds.
Efficient idea validation and product development is another strength of venture studios. Studios like Acharya Ventures use structured frameworks to validate ideas via customer feedback and iterative MVP development, ensuring product-market fit before large-scale scaling.
Some venture studios focus on high-impact sectors, such as healthcare, where W Health Ventures uses the studio model to back and scale startups addressing critical white spaces in India’s large and evolving healthcare market.
Venture studios also support inclusive and tier II entrepreneurs, enhancing inclusivity in the ecosystem and contributing to national economic goals, especially in sectors accounting for significant GDP shares. Initiatives like the RisingIndia ThinkTank venture studio support innovators from Tier II cities and MSMEs.
India's MSMEs contribute nearly 30% of GDP but struggle with digital transformation and growth strategies. Venture studios can provide the handholding necessary to help scale these businesses through productisation, SaaS tools, and operational efficiency models.
Manish Khurana, Founder of Innovations Venture Studio, believes that venture studios offer a solution to India's startup mortality rate by providing end-to-end execution infrastructure. A venture studio is a startup creation platform that ideates, validates, and builds companies from scratch.
Studio-born startups reach Series A nearly twice as fast than conventional startups, demonstrating the efficiency and effectiveness of this model. As India's entrepreneurial ecosystem approaches the vision of Viksit Bharat @2047, the role of venture studios becomes increasingly important.
There are over 1000 venture studios globally as of 2023-24, according to Big Venture Studio Research 2024. The upcoming AIF aims to align with the philosophy of building Bharat-focused, impact-ready businesses and offers structured venture creation models, thematic exposure to climate, infra, and SME IPOs, tight governance, ESOP frameworks, and performance-linked models. The objective of the AIF is to create distributed innovation capacity across India, as entrepreneurial energy continues to explode beyond Tier-1 cities.
In conclusion, venture studios in India not only increase startup survival rates by providing comprehensive support but also accelerate innovation adoption, create jobs, and drive economic growth by nurturing globally ambitious startups solving real-world problems.
In the Indian startup landscape, Innovations Venture Studio (IVS) is introducing a new initiative for institutionalizing venture building as an asset class, aiming to attract Limited Partners (LPs) interested in curated investing opportunities in various sectors such as Climate Tech & Green Energy, MSME Modernisation & Manufacturing 2.0, Deep Tech & Defence, Agri-Innovation & Rural Digitisation, and Culturally Rooted D2C Brands.
With venture studios playing a pivotal role in the Indian startup ecosystem by offering a combination of venture capital funding, operational support, shared resources, and expert mentorship, they provide early-stage Indian entrepreneurs with crucial access to funding, infrastructure, strategic guidance, and industry expertise that contribute significantly to the translation of innovative ideas into scalable businesses.
