Two startups. Up to ₹1 crore. Twenty pitches in one room. That is the number that came out of ASCEND J&K 2026 — ‘Where Mountains Meet Momentum’, the state's biggest startup summit, which wrapped up on July 24 at the SKICC in Srinagar. Organised by the J&K Entrepreneurship Development Institute (JKEDI) under the Industries & Commerce Department, it is worth a Jammu reader's attention less for the venue and more for what it reveals about how a young founder here actually reaches an investor.
The mechanics were simple and brutal in the way pitching always is. 20 startups pitched in front of 14 investors and investment networks; 7 were shortlisted for due diligence — the deeper look investors take before money moves. Two came away with commitments:
EcoBuddy, a technology-driven waste-management and eco-packaging venture founded by Muhammad Farukh Usman, secured a commitment of ₹75 lakh to ₹1 crore from LetsVenture.
Curve Electric drew interest and support from the Build3 Accelerator and angel investor Komal Nailwal.
Between the pitches sat the part that is arguably more useful to a first-timer than the cheques: masterclasses and panels with people who do this nationally. Shradha Sharma, founder of YourStory, moderated a founders' panel; investor Shanti Mohan ran a masterclass on investment readiness — the unglamorous homework of being fundable; and Chintan Bakhshi of IIM Ahmedabad moderated an incubator panel.
Why a Jammu student should read past the Srinagar dateline
Both funded startups this year are Srinagar-based, but the pipeline that put them on that stage is the same one a Jammu founder plugs into. JKEDI runs UT-wide, and Jammu's campuses are already deep in its programmes — from its 60-hour summer internships to the newly launched Startup Idea Challenge 2.0 for school and college founders. ASCEND is what the top of that ladder looks like: the stage where an idea nurtured on a Jammu campus meets an investor with a term sheet.
The lesson for anyone in Jammu sitting on an idea is concrete. The funding is real, the investors show up, and the entry point is not a contact — it is JKEDI's programmes. Get into the pipeline, do the ‘investment readiness’ homework, and a room like this one stops being something you read about and becomes something you pitch in.
Sources: Kashmir Observer; Jammu Links News; Brighter Kashmir.
