U.P. Startup Samvaad 3.0 is the yearly startup and investor meet run by AKTU in Lucknow. The third edition was held on September 8, 2026. More than 100 startups and 50 incubators took part.
Quick Take
- Investors and startups swapped intent letters worth more than Rs 20 crore in one session.
- AKTU opened six platforms in a single day, from the Kalam Patent Centre to the Innovation Hub UP Portal.
- AKTU now runs 33 incubators holding more than 1,400 startups, up from 15 centres in 2021.
In This Article
What Happened at U.P. Startup Samvaad 3.0?
AKTU put startups, incubators, investors, industry and state officials on one campus for a single day. The theme was Connecting Innovation with Investments, and the host was Innovation Hub UP, the startup arm of AKTU.
Smt. Anandiben Patel, Governor of Uttar Pradesh and Chancellor of AKTU, was the Chief Guest. The Governor opened the day and later walked the expo floor, stopping at stalls to talk to founders.
Prof. Jai Prakash Pandey, Vice-Chancellor of AKTU, led the launches from the stage. Dr. Deepak Bagla, Mission Director of the Atal Innovation Mission at NITI Aayog, spoke to the incubator heads.
Smt. Selva Kumari J., Director General and Secretary of the Technical Education Department, also sat on the platform. So did Shri Himanshu Kaushik, who heads Uttar Pradesh Electronics Corporation Limited.
Dr. Anuj Sharma, Dean Academics at AKTU, was on the platform too, alongside Prof. Rajeev Kumar, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of AKTU.
Prof. B. N. Mishra is Dean Innovation at AKTU and Director of Innovation Hub UP. Dr. Mahip Singh is CEO of AKTU Innovation Hub, and Vandana Sharma is Chief Innovation Officer there.
The Startup and Incubator Expo ran across 11 sectors. Those were AI, agritech, health tech, deep tech, manufacturing, EV, clean tech, ed tech, fin tech, defence and robotics.
Governor Anandiben Patel told the hall that a chance to build sits inside every problem. She named farms, health, schools, water saving, clean streets and village work as the places to start.
Governor Anandiben Patel also said cash alone is not enough for a startup. The right problem, the right fix, a good team, real mentors and market sense matter just as much.
How Much Investment Intent Did Startups Get?
Investors and picked startups exchanged intent letters worth more than Rs 20 crore at U.P. Startup Samvaad 3.0. More than 30 investors signed up. The swap came after a live pitch round on the same stage.
Angels, venture capital funds and other investors joined that pitching round. Innovation Hub UP will carry the talks forward through close study, due diligence and agreed terms.
An intent letter is a start, not a cheque. Cash lands only after those three steps.
AKTU also set up the Uttar Pradesh Investors Network on the same stage. That network is meant to keep founder and investor links live long after the stalls come down.
What Did AKTU Launch at Startup Samvaad 3.0?
AKTU launched six platforms in a single session. Governor Anandiben Patel opened the Kalam Patent Centre, and Prof. Jai Prakash Pandey took the rest from the same stage.
| Launch | What it does | Who runs it |
|---|---|---|
| Kalam Patent Centre | Free patent search, drafting, filing and IP protection | Innovation Hub UP, AKTU |
| Student and Faculty Innovation and Entrepreneurship Policy 2026-31 | Rs 15 crore for student, faculty and grassroots innovation | AKTU |
| Innovation Hub UP Portal | Links startups, incubators, mentors and investors | Innovation Hub UP |
| ISGBB Uttar Pradesh cluster | Social impact pilots in health, ed tech and waste | Capgemini, BharatCares, SRF Foundation |
| Incubation leaders programme | Training for incubator managers in Uttar Pradesh | Atal Innovation Mission, Innovation Hub UP |
| Uttar Pradesh Investors Network | Keeps investor and founder links live year round | Innovation Hub UP |
The Kalam Patent Centre handles patent search, drafting, filing and IP work for AKTU innovators. IP means intellectual property.
Students, faculty, startups and grassroots innovators can all walk into the Kalam Patent Centre, and the help there is free.
The Student and Faculty Innovation and Entrepreneurship Policy 2026-31 carries Rs 15 crore. A student project can draw up to Rs 1 lakh, while grassroots innovators can get Rs 50,000.
School-level ideas get Rs 20,000 under the same policy, which also makes room for teachers to run firms of their own.
The Innovation Hub UP Portal is the third launch, and it links founders, startups, incubators, mentors and funds across Uttar Pradesh in one place.
Prof. Jai Prakash Pandey said the Innovation Hub UP Portal would join AKTU incubators on one common platform.
The state cluster of Innovations for Social Good and Better Bharat, or ISGBB, also went live. Capgemini powers ISGBB, and BharatCares runs it with SRF Foundation.
ISGBB works in health care, ed tech, sustainability and waste, and it carries a fix from first test to pilot and then to scale.
Atal Innovation Mission and Innovation Hub UP also began a training run for incubator heads in the state. The aim is better run incubators and more peer learning.
Innovation Hub UP exchanged MoUs with four partners: InvestCSRbox, Sanchi Connect, Tally Solutions and Rapyder Cloud Solutions.
Rapyder Cloud Solutions is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner. The firm has done more than 500 cloud moves and 132 proofs of concept in generative AI.
Vamsi Krishna Yevvari, Chief Marketing Officer of Rapyder, said founders need the right tech to turn ambition into scale. AKTU startups get AWS credits and market help under the deal.
About Innovation Hub UP
Innovation Hub UP is the startup and innovation arm of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University in Lucknow. Innovation Hub UP runs the AKTU incubator network, its startup schemes and its investor links across Uttar Pradesh. Prof. B. N. Mishra is Director of Innovation Hub UP and Dr. Mahip Singh is CEO. The Hub runs U.P. Startup Samvaad and the AKTU Incubator Awards each year.
Which Incubators Won the AKTU Incubator Awards 2026?
GL Bajaj Centre for Research and Incubation won the AKTU Leader Incubator Award 2026. MIET Incubation Forum in Meerut was named Best Promising Incubator 2026, and Governor Anandiben Patel gave out both awards.
The AKTU Incubator Awards 2026 ran in four classes: Leader, Promising, Emerging and Pre-Incubator.
| Incubator | Institution | Recognition |
|---|---|---|
| GL Bajaj Centre for Research and Incubation | GL Bajaj Institute of Technology and Management, Greater Noida | Leader Incubator Award 2026 |
| MIET Incubation Forum | MIET, Meerut | Best Promising Incubator 2026 |
| Navrachna Foundation for Entrepreneurship Development | ITS Engineering College | AKTU Incubator Award 2026 |
| Navotthan Startup Foundation | Rajkiya Engineering College, Kannauj | AKTU Incubator Award 2026 |
| Navyug Navachar Foundation | Institute of Engineering and Technology, Lucknow | AKTU Incubator Award 2026 |
| KIPM Incubators Foundation | KIPM, Gorakhpur | AKTU Incubator Award 2026 |
| Hindustan College of Science and Technology | Mathura | AKTU Incubator Award 2026 |
| ABES Institute of Technology | Ghaziabad | AKTU Incubator Award 2026 |
GL Bajaj Centre for Research and Incubation sits in Greater Noida and holds 145 startups. MIET Incubation Forum has more than 100 startups on its books, and Rehan Ahmed is its CEO.
Eight centres took home awards. Winners came from Greater Noida, Meerut, Kannauj, Gorakhpur, Mathura, Ghaziabad and Lucknow, so six of the eight sit outside Lucknow and Noida.
That spread is the point. AKTU’s strongest incubators are no longer only the ones near a metro.
What Did the Incubator Roundtable Find?
About 36 incubators met at the Uttar Pradesh Incubators Roundtable and listed what slows them down. The session was billed as a Knowledge Exchange Programme. AKTU ran it beside the main stage.
The heads spoke about weak startup pipelines, low student intake and how an incubator pays its own bills. Funding access, equity dilution and company filings came up too.
Shared labs and better investor links filled out the list. Several incubators asked for a map of which centre owns which machine.
Incubator heads also want softer rules for students who want to run a startup. Early-stage cash and credit for small, step by step gains were the other two asks.
Weak sales skills inside incubators were flagged as a gap, and Innovation Hub UP will collect the ideas for state action.
Checklist for founders and incubator heads
- Check whether your incubator is listed on the Innovation Hub UP Portal.
- Take a patent search to the Kalam Patent Centre before you pay any agent.
- Apply under the 2026-31 student policy for a grant of up to Rs 1 lakh.
- Read the intent letter terms before you count the money as raised.
- Sign up with the Uttar Pradesh Investors Network, not just with funds that visit.
- Ask your incubator about the AWS credits under the Rapyder Cloud Solutions deal.
How Large Is AKTU’s Startup Ecosystem in 2026?
AKTU runs 33 incubators in 2026 and they hold more than 1,400 startups. The count stood at just 15 centres in 2021. That is more than double in five years.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| AKTU incubation centres, 2021 | 15 |
| AKTU incubation centres, 2026 | 33 |
| Startups in incubation, 2026 | More than 1,400 |
| Free incubation centres added in two years | 82 |
| Cost of the first 15 centres | Rs 23 crore |
| AKTU Innovation Fund | Rs 100 crore |
| Investment intent at Samvaad 3.0 | More than Rs 20 crore |
| UP Startup Policy 2026 fund of funds | Rs 1,000 crore |
Those first 15 centres cost Rs 23 crore. AKTU has since added 82 free incubators in two years under One District, One Incubator.
The AKTU Innovation Fund stands at Rs 100 crore. That fund is meant to carry an idea from the lab bench all the way to the market.
State money sits behind all of this. The Uttar Pradesh cabinet cleared the UP Startup Policy 2026 in July 2026 with a Rs 1,000 crore fund of funds.
The UP Startup Policy 2026 counts 78 recognised incubators across 23 districts. Seed cash runs up to Rs 15 lakh, and up to Rs 50 lakh in special cases.
Founders at the idea stage get Rs 20,000 a month for two years under that policy. Prototype grants reach Rs 10 lakh.
StartupFeed Insight
Six launches, eight awards and Rs 20 crore of investor intent in one day is real ground covered. The number that will still matter a year from now is not the intent, though. It is 33 incubators holding 1,400 startups, because that pipeline took five years to build and cannot be faked in a day. So watch the Kalam Patent Centre. If AKTU shows 200 or more student patent filings by September 2027, the state will have won something real. Until now its founders had to buy that help outside Uttar Pradesh. If filings stay under 50, Samvaad 4.0 is just another expo.
By Harshvardhan Kothari, Technology and Policy Correspondent
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StartupFeed note: Dr. Mayank Raj, founder of StartupFeed, has recorded more than 15 podcast interviews with investors and incubator heads in collaboration with AKTU Innovation Hub.
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