New Delhi, Dec. 26 -- Roughly 60% of the startups that participated in The Pitch, VCCircle's multi-city startup pitching programme, received investor interest during the fifth chapter of its third edition, held in Hyderabad last week.

Designed to facilitate startup discovery, The Pitch connects handpicked early-stage ventures with some of India's most active venture capital firms. Now in its third year, the programme featured 42 curated startups delivering elevator pitches to a panel of 15 VC firms. The latest edition commenced at IIT Bombay on June 6.

The Hyderabad chapter took place on December 19 at IIT Hyderabad, in partnership with iTIC Incubator, following the previous chapter held in November at BITS Goa's entrepreneurship cells.

In the second edition of The Pitch, events were held at IIT Hyderabad, IIM Calcutta in December 2024, IIT Madras in January, and IIM Lucknow's Noida campus in March.

The fifth chapter of the ongoing edition saw 993 startup registrations, of which around 4.2% were shortlisted to make elevator pitches in Hyderabad last Friday. More than a dozen investors representing 15 investment firms attended the session. These included 4i Airavat Ventures, IN44 Capital, 3one4 Capital, Silverneedle Ventures, Dallas Venture Capital, Pavestone VC, Zephyr Management, Colossa Ventures LLP, Anthill Ventures, and NABVENTURES.

Of the 42 startups that pitched, 60% drew investor interest for follow-up discussions. These ventures span diverse sectors, with 86% yet to raise external funding and the rest having previously secured angel, seed, Series A, or other rounds.

The presenting startups included BugRaid AI, SwissCondor AI Solutions Pvt Ltd, Planytics AI, Deeptraq AI, Ravian AI, and Genasis AI. In terms of business model distribution, 9% of startups were in the business-to-consumer category, 33% in business-to-business, and 58% catered to both segments.

Regionally, 35% of the startups participating were from Hyderabad, 14% from Chennai and Pune, respectively. Mumbai and Bengaluru each accounted for 7-9%, while the remaining 21% hailed from other parts of the country.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.