The Outlook Start-Up Outperformers 2023 identified eight city clusters for the purpose of ranking the best start-up ecosystems in India. The Delhi NCR cluster, which includes Gurgaon, Noida and Greater Noida, tops the list. Among individual cities in this cluster, Delhi, with a score of 50.9 and third place in the overall city ranking, is the best performing city even when the popular perception is that major start-up activity takes place in the cyber hubs in its neighbourhood. Gurgaon is ranked fifth in the overall city ranking list with a score of 39.2 and Noida+Greater Noida stands at the 10th spot with a score of 25.4. While Gurgaon and Noida+Greater Noida have scores lower than that of Delhi, the Delhi cluster stays on top since the next best cluster of Hyderabad+Secunderabad has a score closer to Gurgaon and Noida+Greater Noida than Delhi.

At the other end of the spectrum is the Mumbai cluster, where, despite the impressive individual score and rank of Mumbai, the cluster strength is weak as the poor scores of Thane and Navi Mumbai bring down the overall cluster score. It shows that the lead city’s strength alone is not enough to power a cluster.

Ahmedabad has an individual rank of eight with a final score of 30.7, while Gandhinagar is at the 22nd position with a score of 15.6. As a cluster, they are ranked fourth, with a score of 23.2, closely behind the Mumbai cluster. Kolkata and Howrah have similar scores and, hence, complement each other to gain a respectable cluster strength. Bhubaneswar and Cuttack are the two cluster cities with highly similar scores—17.3 and 11.1 respectively. However, the cluster strength is too weak to make a dent on the prospects of any of its higher ranked counterpart.