Know how ready a startup really is to scale or to fund.
SMAT© — the Startup Maturity Assessment Tool — scores new ventures across 12 stages based on real-world, demonstrable evidence. The structured, standardised and repeatable assessments can provide a ‘single view’ to investors, founders and incubators.
A maturity benchmark, built for startups.
The underlying framework for SMAT© is the Accelerated Startup Discovery Process (ASDP©), developed by Prof Devdip Purkayastha — built on four decades of experience across leading global MNCs such as P&G and DHL, and a deep engagement with the Indian startup ecosystem at the DS School of Entrepreneurship, IIT Bombay.
SMAT© Basic provides a detailed assessment with scoring. SMAT© Advance turns the result into a clear, prioritised action plan.
Like ISO for quality audits, or the Capability Maturity Model for software, SMAT© gives founders, incubators, mentors and investors one shared, defensible way to measure startup maturity, scalability and fundability.
| 01 Founder & Team Alignment | — / 18 |
| 02 Customer Problem & Persona | — / 18 |
| 03 Competition & Market Sizes | — / 18 |
| 04 Customer Value Proposition & Solution Design | — / 18 |
| 05 Branding, Positioning & Advertising | — / 18 |
| 06 Unit Economics | — / 18 |
| 07 Go-to-Market Plan | — / 18 |
| 08 Path to Scaling | — / 18 |
| 09 Business Model & Growth Strategy | — / 18 |
| 10 Company Structure, Registration & Governance | — / 18 |
| 11 Funding Strategy | — / 18 |
| 12 Ecosystem Engagement | — / 18 |
| Total SMAT© Score | — / 216 |
The scoring system
Maturity = proof, not confidence.
- Low (1) — opinion, assumption or desk thinking.
- Medium (2) — partial evidence from early experiments.
- High (3) — decision-grade: repeated, recent, real-world.
- Each stage scores out of 18; six questions per stage.
- One fragile stage can outweigh a strong total.
Four readiness bands.
Scale-Ready
Strong, decision-grade evidence across most stages. Ready to scale, raise, or accelerate with confidence.
Mid-Maturity
Real progress, but two or three weak stages need strengthening before the next major commitment.
Early Stage
Direction is forming, yet evidence is uneven. Prioritise customer and problem validation first.
Pre-Maturity
Mostly assumptions. Return to founder alignment and customer discovery before building further.
Contact the SMAT© Team to take the more detailed SMAT© Advanced assessment, with analytical tools and actionable outputs.
A single maturity rating across all twelve stages, out of 216, mapped to a readiness band.
Strengths, gaps and benchmarks made explicit — stage by stage, against evidence.
Prioritised next steps through the ASDP framework, so you know exactly what to fix first.
An evidence-first path from idea to impact.
The Accelerated Startup Discovery Process structures the early venture journey into 12 distinct, yet iterative stages, each with a discovery objective, evidence standards and diagnostic red flags. It is a disciplined discovery engine — sequenced in the order in which evidence is most efficiently generated, so learning happens early, cheaply, and before commitment.
Discover Yourself & Your Team
Validate the founders before the market. Motivation, complementary roles, decision rights and a real founder agreement — alignment that survives the first hard quarter.
Discover Your Customer Problem & Persona
Move from “we think” to “we have evidence.” A narrow, behaviour-based persona and a problem proven frequent, painful and urgent through primary interviews.
Discover Your Competition & Market Sizes
Map direct, indirect and status-quo competitors. Defensible bottom-up TAM/SAM/SOM, a chosen beachhead, and an honest read of switching barriers.
Discover Your Customer Value Proposition & Solution Design
A value proposition explainable in fifteen seconds and a minimum desirable product scoped to the sharpest pain — tested with real users, not described in slides.
Discover Your Branding, Positioning & Advertising
Clear positioning, consistent brand cues across every touchpoint, messaging tested against response data, and at least one credible proof asset.
Discover Your Unit Economics
Pricing anchored to value. CAC, LTV, contribution margin and payback modelled from observed data — and a credible, arithmetical path to profitability.
Discover Your Go-to-Market Plan
A justified first channel, a funnel with real conversion assumptions, two live GTM experiments, and a sales motion that does not depend on founder charisma.
Discover Your Path to Scaling
Delivery that no longer routes through the founders. 10× bottlenecks identified, hiring mapped to the plan, and quality processes that survive growth.
Discover Your Business Model & Growth Strategy
A clear model with engineered growth loops, defined metrics, a retention strategy and prioritised expansion paths — stress-tested against adverse conditions.
Discover Your Company Structure, Registration & Governance
The right legal entity, ready agreement templates, IP and data obligations understood, finance operations in place, and records organised for diligence.
Discover Your Funding Strategy
Milestone-based funding need, source-fit clarity, an evidence-grounded investor narrative, clean traction packaging and genuine diligence readiness.
Discover Your Ecosystem Engagement
Ecosystem relationships converted into outcomes — credible partner associations, strategic visibility, and a strategy benchmarked and reviewed over time.
The ASDP© stages run as a loop, not a line.
When a later-stage symptom appears, it is first a signal that earlier evidence needs regenerating. Iteration is not failure — it is the design working as intended.
Validatereduce risk→
Iteratelearn fast→
Executebuild what works→
Scalegrow what lasts
With the advent of LLMs and AI agents, the framework is unchanged. The loop is significantly faster.
Created by Devdip Purkayastha.
Devdip Purkayastha works at the intersection of global business practice and new venture creation, bringing the rigour of his ASDP© and SMAT© methodology to the messy reality of building startups.
He spent three decades in industry at leading global corporations including P&G and DHL, was named CEO of the Year, and served as President of Enactus India. He has been a Faculty at the DS School of Entrepreneurship at IIT Bombay for over a decade, deeply engaged with startup founders and stakeholders. He studied at IIT Kharagpur and IIM Calcutta, with executive programmes at Wharton and INSEAD, and is the author of the Accelerated Startup Discovery Playbook and Start-Up Case Studies.
Startup Mentor & Trainer
Author
Creator of SMAT© and ASDP©
Faculty, IIT Bombay, DS School of Entrepreneurship
1:1 guidance through SMAT© and ASDP — from validated problem to scalable model.
Equip accelerators to benchmark and support cohorts on one consistent standard.
Champion SMAT© as the shared language for startup readiness across the ecosystem.
The ASDP© Toolkit.
Explore end-to-end startup business plans and product-innovation ideas with proprietary, RAG-based AI tools — available across Deep-Tech domains as well as MSME, social-sector and general-technology domains. Custom AI tools and RAGs can also be developed.
For Founders, Incubators and Investors wishing to assess, accelerate or fund a startup.
SMAT© / ASDP© Advisory Services
Reach out to the SMATCheck team for advisory services to accelerate your startup, or to explore technology-commercialisation opportunities.
- SMAT© Advanced — a guided, expert-led, consultative assessment and action plan.
- Founders — explore ideas across sectors and technologies, from validated problems to scalable, fundable models.
- Researchers — explore pathways to commercialise research or theses.
- Incubators — a structured, standard, repeatable startup-maturity standard across a portfolio of incubatees.
- Investors — create a ‘single view’ with founders, based on demonstrated evidence, for investment discussions.
Frequently asked.
What is SMAT©?
SMAT© (Startup Maturity Assessment Tool) is a structured, evidence-linked benchmark that scores a startup’s readiness across twelve stages and seventy-two questions — the way ISO or a Capability Maturity Model standardises other fields. Its core principle is simple: maturity is proof, not confidence.
How is ASDP different from SMAT©?
ASDP — the Accelerated Startup Discovery Process — is the twelve-stage journey a venture must run, from founder alignment to ecosystem engagement. SMAT© is the execution dashboard that tells you, at each stage, whether you are actually ready to move forward. ASDP defines the path; SMAT© measures whether you have earned the next step.
How is the SMAT© score calculated?
Each of the twelve stages carries six questions, scored Low (1), Medium (2) or High (3) strictly against evidence. That yields a maximum of 18 per stage and 216 overall, mapped to four readiness bands. One fragile stage — founder alignment, unit economics or funding strategy — can outweigh a high total.
Do you work with incubators and investors?
Yes. Incubators and investors use SMAT© to benchmark whole portfolios on one consistent scale, run standardised quarterly assessments, and track maturity over time.
How do I start?
Try the SMAT© GPT Tutor for a guided self-assessment, or send a message to discuss 1:1 advisory, a team workshop, or a cohort programme.
Assess your startup today.