Padup Ventures

Choosing the right programme

Start with where you actually are. BootUp is for founders still proving there is a market — if you are at idea or prototype stage, that is the door. RevvUp is for startups already selling, that need to show scale before an institutional round. FundUp is not applied to separately; it is the fundraising step BootUp graduates go into.

How applications work

• There is one form on the site and it is open all year. No cohort dates or deadlines are published, so there is nothing to wait for.
• The form is short: contact details, startup name, a description in two or three sentences, sector, stage, team size, funding status, an elevator pitch and an optional website.
• PadUp says its team reviews applications and gets back within 48 hours. If you have not heard back, the general enquiries address is the follow-up route.

How selection works

The site says only that selection is rigorous and does not publish its criteria or its stages. Assume a conversation follows the form rather than an automatic place on a programme.

What to prepare

• A sharp answer on market potential. BootUp is built around validating demand with customer-centric, lean startup methods, so the questions you will be pushed on are who buys, why now, and whether it scales.
• Evidence from real customer conversations rather than opinion — the programme's own language is about validating assumptions, not defending them.
• For the demo day later on: a narrative covering the problem, your solution, market opportunity, go-to-market, first customers, business model, sales approach and three-year projections. Mentors run two to three weeks of mock pitches before you face investors, so expect the pitch to be rewritten.

Questions worth asking before you commit

• Is there a programme fee? The site does not say.
• What equity, if any, does PadUp take, as distinct from the investors who back you at the demo day? The site does not say that either.
• Which length of RevvUp applies to you — its pages give three different answers.

PadUp Ventures is a virtual accelerator for early-stage technology startups, run by PadUp Ventures Private Limited from Star Tower in Sector 30, Gurugram, Haryana. It works with founders remotely rather than from an incubation campus, and pairs structured mentoring with a route to angel money through its own investor network. Its own framework is called the PadUp Way.

How programmes work

The PadUp Way has three named parts, and they run in sequence. BootUp is the pre-acceleration bootcamp: an online validation programme where founders test whether their idea has a market, work through weekly tasks with mentors, and build the result into a business plan. PadUp describes it as action learning, with weekly coaching from its Chief Mentor alongside group and one-to-one sessions with its business mentors. BootUp ends in a Demo Day, where founders pitch to the accelerator's own angel investors. The site gives BootUp's length as ten to sixteen weeks on its programme pages and as sixteen weeks on the home page.

FundUp is the fundraising step that follows. Before the pitch, mentors put founders through two to three weeks of mock sessions. Once a mentor signs off, PadUp organises a virtual demo day: investors get a pre-read, then each startup gets a fifteen-minute pitch and forty-five minutes of questions in a two-hour online session, followed by a moderated discussion. Investors register their interest through a form afterwards. PadUp then appoints Singhania & Co. as the due diligence partner, a step it says takes thirty days, after which a shareholder agreement is signed and a capital call runs over two weeks. The investors are Friends of PadUp, an angel group the company describes as adjunct to itself, plus other angel networks, micro-VCs and family offices.

RevvUp is the acceleration programme for startups that have taken that angel money and now need to show traction. It gives each startup on-demand mentoring, in person and remote, from a domain expert mentor, with milestones set and reviewed every month and monthly masterclasses alongside. The stated aim is to get a startup from its first customers in a niche to larger clients, and from there to a Pre-Series A or Series A round. Its length is stated inconsistently across the site: twelve, twenty-four or thirty-six months on one page, twelve to thirty-six months on the home page, and twelve to twenty-four months a few paragraphs further down the programmes page.

Who can apply

PadUp runs one open application form rather than dated cohorts, and no deadline or intake window appears anywhere on the site. The form asks for your name, email, phone, startup name, a short description, your sector, your stage, team size, funding status, an elevator pitch and an optional website. The sector list runs AI/ML, health tech, fintech, edtech, SaaS, consumer, e-commerce, agritech and clean tech, with an "other" option. The stage list runs idea, prototype, MVP, early revenue and scaling, so the door is open across the early-stage range rather than to one stage only. Once you submit, PadUp says its team reviews the application and comes back within 48 hours.

The site sets out no eligibility bar beyond that. It names no incorporation requirement, no state or category restriction, and no student or campus tie. It also does not publish whether its programmes charge a fee, and it does not state what equity, if any, PadUp itself takes — the shareholder agreement it describes is between the startup and the investors who back it at the demo day. Ask about both before you commit.

Scale

PadUp's numbers are self-reported and undated, and its own pages disagree. The home page counts 3,000 startups screened, 350 mentored, 175 graduated, 120 angel or seed funded and 45 with follow-on investment; the about page instead says over 3,000 screened and 300-plus accelerated, and the programmes page says its demo days have funded over 175 startups. Treat the range rather than any single figure. Its portfolio directory lists 34 companies, among them IntelleWings, Olbrain Labs, Flixdrop, Assetchain, Innovodigm and Docturnal, several of which also have written-up case studies on the site.

Who runs it

The team page names Rajat Jain, Pankaj Thakar (Founder and Chief Mentor), Divyendu Kumar and Syed Safawi as the founders. Behind them sits Friends of PadUp, described as a network of 232 senior executives and business leaders from corporate, government, academia and the social sector, badged on the home page as running since 2017; the tiles beside that line count 150 mentors and 106 investors. The published directory also lists more than a hundred expert mentors and a smaller group of super mentors and investor partners, most of them long-career corporate executives rather than career investors.

The site lists a wide set of partners, including university and institute partners, angel networks such as the Indian Angel Network, Lead Angels and Chandigarh Angels, and professional firms. These appear as a partner directory with no statement of what each relationship involves, so read them as an ecosystem list rather than as accreditation. PadUp claims no government recognition anywhere on its site.

Locations and contact

PadUp works out of one office, at 609 Star Tower, Sector 30, Gurugram, next to Star Mall on NH8. General enquiries go to info@padup.in. There is no careers page. The site does publish a resource library of articles and a short Happenings section covering events and workshops.