ET Startup Awards 2022: Here’s how we selected this year’s winners

Having seen at least two cycles of the funding boom followed by a tech winter, the awards are a true testament to the way Indian entrepreneurship has matured in the past eight years amid many crests and troughs.

To reflect the changes, we have added new categories in the past two years amid the Covid pandemic to recognise the efforts companies made to brave tough times.

This year we introduced a new category – CEO of the Year – to highlight the evolution of the ecosystem as professionals are leading scaled companies, not just founders.

But what goes behind selecting the nominees and the winners of the ET Startup Awards, considered the most prestigious in the Indian entrepreneurial community.

Here is a timeline of the efforts that went into making the process most rigorous and detailed

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August: ET reached out to over 200 of the country’s top entrepreneurs, investors, industry groups and other stakeholders to compile a list of the brightest entrepreneurial talent.

September: We received hundreds of nominations from this select group. The editorial team then filtered and analysed each entry by going through financial and others data with the help of our knowledge partner Tracxn to arrive at a shortlist of nominees.

ET’s editorial team then reached out to all the nominees to verify information, interview founders and tally all the data independently.

October: The ET editorial team then put together the ETSA jury dossier, which contained the names of the top five nominees in each category along with detailed profiles and financials for the past three years. The data shared by companies is confidential and is never published. It remains with the jury.

October 28: The ETSA jury met virtually for over two hours to decide the winners. The process involved two rounds of secret balloting with related parties – investors, investee companies, board members – abstaining from voting. Jury members who were nominated, related to or colleagues of nominees recused themselves entirely from discussions and refrained from voting.