30, July 2026

Innovation Pipeline Progression and Venture Outcomes from Concept to Commercialization among Women Co-Founded Startups in Tamil Nadu under the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme

VOLUME-10; ISSUE-7; JULY-2026

Author(s): 1. Er.M.Sriraaman, 2. Dr.P.Veeramani

Authors Affiliations:

  1. Research Scholar, Department of Women’s Studies, Alagappa University, Karaikudi – 630001, Tamil Nadu, India. ;
  2. Assistant Professor and Head (i/c), Department of Women’s Studies, Alagappa University, Karaikudi – 630001, Tamil Nadu, India.

DOIs:10.2017/IJRCS/202607009     |     Paper ID: IJRCS202607009


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This paper examines the innovation-to-impact pathway among 175 women co-founded startups funded under the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS) in Tamil Nadu, using startup-level secondary data. The study investigates how startups progress through five innovation milestones and how cumulative milestone completion measured as pipeline depth on an ordinal scale of zero to four, which relates to employment generation, intellectual property filing, and external funding mobilisation. Kendall's tau-b, Somers' D, Goodman-Kruskal gamma, the Kruskal-Wallis H test, and Cramér's V are applied to match the ordinal and binary distributional characteristics of the data. The pipeline exhibits steep attrition between prototype development and field trials, with inter-stage dropout rates of 26.8% and 30.0% at those two transitions. Pipeline depth is a strong predictor of market launch (τ = 0.574, p < .001), a moderate predictor of employment (τ = 0.299, p < .001; Somers' D = 0.324), and a weak-to-moderate predictor of external funding (τ = 0.169, p = .013; γ = 0.322), but is unrelated to IP filing (τ = −0.048, p = .491). Industry group significantly predicts pipeline depth (Kruskal-Wallis H = 20.297, df = 7, p = .005): Agriculture/Food achieves the highest mean depth and market launch rate (50.0%), while Healthcare/Biotechnology, at 25.1% of the sample, shows the lowest market launch rate (24.3%) and the highest stall concentration. Women co-founded startups are disproportionately concentrated in care-adjacent industries at 42.3% of the sample, yet this concentration produces no statistically significant aggregate outcome penalty. The paper argues that pipeline depth, not sectoral identity or incubation structure, is the primary determinant of women-led innovation outcomes within this scheme.

Innovation pipeline, Women entrepreneurship, Technology Commercialisation, Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, Pipeline depth, Care-adjacent industries, Ordinal association, Tamil Nadu

Er.M.Sriraaman,  Dr.P.Veeramani (2026); Innovation Pipeline Progression and Venture Outcomes from Concept to Commercialization among Women Co-Founded Startups in Tamil Nadu under the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, International Journal of Research Culture Society,    ISSN(O): 2456-6683,  Volume – 10,   Issue –  7,  Available on – https://ijrcs.org/

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