Centre for Research on Start-ups and Risk Financing

Centre for Research on Startups and Risk Financing (CREST), is an Institute of Eminence-Research Centre at IIT Madras. The growth in the Indian start-up ecosystem, which has become one of the world’s largest, has been primarily driven by policy and practice. The objective of CREST is to create and disseminate new knowledge on the Start-up ecosystem through scholarly research, commissioned studies, and collaborative work. The thought leadership of CREST would complement policy and practice in contributing to the growth of the start-up ecosystem in the country. The evidence from various studies would help in informed policy formulation and practitioner decision making. A major contribution of CREST has been the development of the Information Platform on the Indian Start-up Ecosystem. The platform integrates information from scattered sources on the different stakeholders in the Indian Start-up ecosystem, viz., Start-ups, Angel investors, Incubators, VCs, Government Funding, Debt Funding, and so on. Through its development partner, YNOS Venture Engine, the platform is now accessible across the globe for researchers, investors, startup founders, corporates, and so on. By providing easy access to such high quality information, CREST contributes to democratising entrepreneurship and conducting high quality research ;