Based on an evaluation of the start-up and the founding team, GDC selects some of them to join the I-GNITE program, which aims to provide guidance to both the founders and the start-up at a critical stage of their evolution. The program enables start-ups to mature from TRL3 (TRL – Technology Readiness Level) to TRL6 and become more acceptable to commercial investors.

To take forward their innovation, the founding team comes together, incorporates a start-up and starts building their product/solution. Some of the start-ups join an incubator, while some operate on their own. The next few milestones from here for the start-up typically are to raise some seed capital, develop and validate their Minimum Viable Product, find a product-market fit, and obtain a business model fit. The start-up also formulates a business plan while establishing core organisational processes. During the I-GNITE program, GDC helps the participating start-up on all of the above by actively mentoring the team for a few months. At the end of the I-GNITE program, a start-up would typically have found a product-market fit and a business model fit and be able to attract commercial investors.