Only Three Studies Directly Examine Gen Z in Indian Start-Ups, Systematic Review Finds

A systematic review of entrepreneurship research has found that although scholarship on Indian start-ups is expanding rapidly, almost none of it directly studies Generation Z. Of 544 unique records retrieved from the Scopus database, only three explicitly used Gen Z terminology. The review, published in Future Business Journal by Soumya Mukherjee, Chandrika Bhattacharyya and Mrinal Kanti Das, maps this literature and proposes a conceptual framework, but its authors are unusually blunt about the limits of their own evidence: the framework is interpretive and agenda setting, not proof of any causal generational effect.

The search was conducted on May 23, 2026, using a predefined TITLE-ABS-KEY Boolean strategy combining terms for Gen Z, youth and young entrepreneurs with start-ups, innovation, participation and performance, all filtered to India. It returned 546 records published between 1975 and May 2026. After removing two duplicates, 544 unique records remained. Following predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria covering subject area, publication type, source type and language, and screening titles, abstracts and keywords, the team retained 199 records for structured thematic synthesis. The reporting follows PRISMA 2020 transparency principles.

The corpus is young and growing quickly. It accumulated 6,270 Scopus citations, averaging 11.53 per record, and 376 records, or 69.0 percent, appeared from 2019 onward. Annual output rose from 29 records in 2019 to 75 in 2025, with the 2026 figure partial because the export was produced in May of that year. The authors caution that this pattern reflects corpus growth, not evidence of increasing Gen Z participation in start-ups. The literature is also dispersed across 415 source titles, led by Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies with 40 records, and author-defined keywords are headed by India, entrepreneurship and start-ups.

Thematically, innovation dominates, appearing in 148 of the 199 synthesis records, spanning digital platform ventures, fintech, e-health, university spin-offs, food value chains and smart-city entrepreneurship. Performance appears in 132 records, covering sustainable enterprise performance, accelerator outcomes, financing and competitive advantage. Participation is the least represented mechanism: only 50 records use participation or engagement concepts. The authors argue this gap is analytically important, because the literature commonly jumps from individual resources to innovation or performance without measuring the behavioral process that connects them.

The three direct Gen Z records are narrowly scoped. Polisetty and Kurian examine the shared economy and Airbnb; Yadav and Chaudhari compare leadership preferences across Gen X, Y and Z in India; and Sivaprakasam and colleagues discuss technological change and opportunity in the gig workforce. None offers a multi-state causal test linking Gen Z participation, innovation and venture performance. Consequently, the review treats evidence on students, youth and young entrepreneurs as proxy evidence for candidate mechanisms, explicitly refusing to convert general youth findings into Gen Z-specific claims.

On that proxy base, the authors build a three-dimensional taxonomy of twelve interpretive categories. The Role dimension distinguishes founders and co-founders, employees and team members, customers and community participants, and ecosystem connectors. The Participation dimension runs through four levels, from reactive task execution through consultative feedback and proactive initiation to collaborative, empowered participation with decision authority. The Value Creation dimension covers digital innovation, organizational participation, venture performance and sustainability or inclusion. The categories are recurring patterns in the literature, not statistically validated latent constructs, and coding relied on titles, abstracts and keywords rather than full-text quality appraisal.

The theoretical architecture is hierarchical. Dynamic Capabilities Theory serves as the umbrella lens, explaining how ventures sense opportunities, seize them through experimentation and reconfigure routines. Human Capital Theory operates at the micro level, specifying the knowledge, skills and learning orientation individuals may contribute. Employee voice, autonomy and trust perspectives explain whether those resources actually enter decisions through psychological safety and managerial responsiveness. Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Theory supplies the contextual layer of finance, universities, mentors, markets and policy. The proposed conversion chain runs from Gen Z-relevant human capital, through voice and participation, to dynamic capability development, and finally to innovation and venture outcomes, with ecosystem conditions as boundary constraints.

The review is equally clear about rival explanations and risks. Generational labels can obscure differences in education, career stage, socioeconomic position, gender, location and access to technology, and age or domain expertise may explain observed relationships better than cohort membership. Cross-sectional self-report designs are prone to common method bias and reverse causation, since successful ventures may generate more participation rather than the reverse. Start-ups can also encourage suggestions while keeping decision making centralized, producing symbolic participation that breeds frustration. Sectoral context matters too: digital fluency may help interface testing in fintech but means little without farmers’ trust in agritech or clinical validity in e-health.

Geographic visibility is another asymmetry. Counting state names only when they appeared in titles, abstracts or author keywords, Delhi leads with 17 mentions, followed by Gujarat with 12, Karnataka with 11, Tamil Nadu and Kerala with nine each, and Odisha with eight. These counts measure research visibility, not start-up activity. For context, DPIIT reported Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Gujarat among the leading regions by recognized start-ups as of March 31, 2026, and Karnataka’s third-place publication visibility alongside its ecosystem prominence illustrates a research-ecosystem visibility gap rather than lower entrepreneurial activity.

The paper’s practical contribution is a research agenda rather than a conclusion. The authors call for direct, multi-state empirical work across regions including Delhi-NCR, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal, with multilevel designs nesting employees in ventures, measurement invariance for state comparisons, and three-wave longitudinal studies collecting founder, employee and archival data. Crucially, any test of a generational effect requires a non-Gen Z comparison group, and measured resources rather than cohort labels should do the predictive work. Until such studies exist, the review’s framework should be read as a map of what the literature covers and what remains untested, not as a verified description of how Generation Z behaves in Indian start-ups.

Subject of Research: A systematic literature review mapping Generation Z research in Indian start-ups and proposing a conceptual framework

Article Title: Toward an agenda for Gen Z in Indian start-ups: a systematic literature mapping and conceptual framework

Article References: Mukherjee, S., Bhattacharyya, C., & Das, M. K. (2026). Toward an agenda for Gen Z in Indian start-ups: a systematic literature mapping and conceptual framework. Future Business Journal, 12(1), Article 318. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-026-01022-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s43093-026-01022-1

Keywords: Generation Z, Indian start-ups, systematic literature review, Scopus, bibliometrics, entrepreneurship, innovation, dynamic capabilities, employee participation, research agenda, Toward, agenda