Elevate: The Shark Tank

Elevate, The Shark Tank of IIT Madras, is a pan-India fundraising event that connects promising startups with top mentors and investors, providing them with opportunities to raise funds, enhance their skills, and access valuable market resources. It fosters collaboration between early-stage entrepreneurs, mentors, angel investors, and venture capitalists, creating a dynamic platform for knowledge exchange and business growth. Through this initiative, Elevate supports startups in navigating the entrepreneurial ecosystem and unlocking new opportunities for success. Last year, the event featured over 800 startups and offered an investment opportunity exceeding $3.5 million.

A startup can opt for any one of these two tracks:

• Tech Track: The teck track focuses on empowering startups with a technology driven service by providing mentorship and connecting them with investors specialising in the same domain.
  Ex:Gen AI, Deeptech, SaaS, Healthcare, FinTech, Agri-Tech etc.
• Sector Agnostic Track: The Sector Agnostic track is open to all startups wether or not they use technology provided that their final service is not directly tech based. This track offers startups the opportunity to gain visibility and connect with the right mentors, investors to aid their growth. Ex:Logistics startup(With/Without an application), E-Commerce etc.

The competition is going to take place in three rounds: 

Round 1:

Submit few details about your startup along with MVP/Prototype and website link in the registration form given. The round one deadline is till 20th January. The submissions will be reviewed by startup mentors, industry leaders and representatives from accelerators.

Mentorship Webinar - Opportunity to interact with industry leaders.

Round 2:

Selected Startups will have to pitch their startup in front of the panel of experts. A minimum of three teams from every zone will move forward for the next stage. The zonal round will be held in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad in person.(An online round will also be held for those startups who can not come offline)

Personalised Mentorship - One on one mentoring sessions for all finalists.

Round 3:

The finalists will pitch during E-Summit, IIT Madras in front of a panel of delegates from the investment teams of renowned Venture Capital Firms i.e. Elevate's Investment Sponsors. The finalists would also get free passes to E-Summit '25.