Authors: Research Scholar Sri Charan Bussa, Dr Humera Fatima
Abstract: India's startup ecosystem has experienced rapid expansion in recent years, positioning itself as a global hub for innovation, particularly in technology, services, and product-based enterprises. Nevertheless, access to the venturing capital is provided unevenly and extremely selectively in spite of such dynamic growth. The need to understand the impact of structural and operational obstacles on the ability of the startups to obtain venture capital has moved this paper to undertake an investigation of the issues as they are experienced in the real world setting by emerging ventures in various sectors, stages and locations. On the foundation of primary survey of 150 Founder of startups and key personnel, the study provides a statistically supported study of variables namely demographics background, funding levels, regulatory hindrances, internal performance constraints and recognition of government schemes. The tools of statistical analysis such as the descriptive analysis and a Chi-Square test have been utilized to study the connection between the factors influencing the challenges in the start-up and funding results. The results show that there exists strong relation between the structural inefficiencies–such as absent investor networks or documentation deficiency with the low VC access and operational derailment, which still influences the fund usage after investment. The paper concludes that although the availability of early-stage capital is relatively easy, the ecosystem has a structural disjointedness and most of the startups are unable to scale up or reach the next level of funding. It is the main finding of the paper that the current policies lack better implementation, there is a necessity of the focused support mechanisms, and there is a need of increased connectivity among the investors and startups. This study gives to the policy argumentation by proposing feasible changes, that could be made in the venture capital community, to enhance business entrepreneurial momentum in a less exclusive way in India.
