ETSA 2026: Elite jury meets today to crown startup ecosystem’s best

Today, an elite panel, led by Wipro’s Rishad Premji, enters the jury room to pick the winners of the 12th edition of The Economic Times Startup Awards, the country’s most treasured recognition for entrepreneurial excellence.

The star-studded jury comprises Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Myntra and Curefit cofounder Mukesh Bansal, Flipkart and Navi cofounder Sachin Bansal, Caratlane cofounder Mithun Sacheti, Swiggy Instamart CEO Nandita Sinha, Snap CBO Ajit Mohan, Anthropic India MD Irina Ghose, Wingify and Lossfunk founder Paras Chopra, Urban Company cofounder and CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal and Aditya Birla Group director Aryaman Vikram Birla.

In a dozen years, ETSA has put itself on the pedestal as the most insightful spotlight on the new-age industry. Be it a Gen Z brainwave or the hard-earned accomplishments built on one’s own devices, social inventions, genius investors, unstoppable women and entrepreneurs who just won’t give up — a curated few find themselves on the ETSA shortlist.

The most precious of the lot remains the Startup of the Year award.

This year’s nominees are:

Bootstrap Champ

• Suta
• Habuild
• Urban Vault
• Melento
• D’You

Top Innovator

• Theranautilus
• EtherealX
• 4baseCare
• QNu Labs
• Agrani Labs

Comeback Kid

• Shreya Mishra, Neeraj Jain, Nikhil Nahar
• Abhishek Bansal, Vaibhav Khandelwal, Praharsh Chandra, Gaurav Jaithlia
• Anil Goteti
• Mukund Jha
• Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Sankaranarayanan Devarajan, Sahradayi Modi

Best on Campus

• Qosmic
• Armatrix
• Panoculon Labs
• Dream Aerospace
• Plenome Technologies

Woman Ahead

• Prachi Dharani
• Malini Adapureddy
• Pallavi Mohadikar
• Minu Margeret
• Ankur Dahiya
• Pallavi Shrivastava

Social Enterprise

• CureBay
• Varaha
• Karo Sambhav
• Padcare Labs
• Cornext

Midas Touch

• Shailesh Lakhani
• Manu Chandra
• Anu Hariharan
• Mukesh Bansal

Startup of the Year