There exists a considerable amount of confusion about the differences between an incubator and an accelerator and many people use the terms interchangeably, says Rajinish Menon, former director-Startups, Microsoft India, and founder of Sukino Healthcare. Incubators are mostly models where a startup or an idea for a startup is actually given birth to and from the ideation stage, it is elevated to the crawling stage. From zero stage to the crawling stage, the startup progresses to the ‘walking stage’. These are the three stages of a startup where an incubator plays its role. Acceleration comes at a much more deeper level. An accelerator is supporting a startup to walk faster and run from the walking stage. The motive is to accelerate a particular business model and making the startup learn how to scale up its own growth. An accelerator helps startups learn how to consume funds in an optimal way so that customer acquisitions will become much easier. On the other hand, incubation is all about making a business realize it’s potential. An incubator helps a founder assess whether a particular model will be successful or not.
