Two Indian startups have been selected for Hub71 Cohort 18, Abu Dhabi’s global tech startup programme, joining 25 other companies chosen from a record 2,453 applications across 112 countries. The acceptance rate for this cohort was 1.1%, making it one of the most competitive selection rounds the programme has run.
Uravu Labs, a Bengaluru-based climate tech company that produces drinking water from atmospheric moisture using renewable energy, and Endimension Technology, a Mumbai-based AI-first radiology platform incubated at IIT Bombay, will now establish operations in Abu Dhabi as part of Hub71’s 12-month Access Programme.
About Hub71 and What the Selection Means
Hub71 is Abu Dhabi’s flagship technology ecosystem backed by the Abu Dhabi Government, Mubadala Investment Company, and SoftBank Vision Fund. Its Access Programme offers selected startups up to AED 250,000 in in-kind incentives and an additional AED 250,000 in cash via a SAFE note, alongside mentorship, investor introductions, regulatory support and access to Hub71’s corporate and government partner network. Top performers qualify for follow-on support and a pathway to scale from Abu Dhabi into global markets.
With Cohort 18, Hub71’s total startup ecosystem has grown to 525 companies. For the first time in the programme’s history, all 27 selected startups are headquartered outside the UAE, reflecting Abu Dhabi’s ambition to be a genuine global landing pad rather than a regional hub.
Ahmad Ali Alwan, CEO of Hub71, said the companies joining the cohort are developing technologies with clear market applications and the ability to scale. “At Hub71, we enable founders to secure commercial traction and capital, and to grow from Abu Dhabi into global markets,” he said.
The two Indian selections sit within a broader strategic context. Their inclusion reflects the strengthening innovation corridor between India and the UAE under the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which has been actively used by both governments to encourage cross-border investment and startup expansion since its signing in 2022.
Uravu Labs: Making Water from Air
Uravu Labs is not a new name in India’s climate tech space. Founded in 2019 and led by Co-founder and CEO Swapnil Shrivastav, Uravu Labs has developed an innovative technology that harnesses renewable energy to extract water directly from air, offering a sustainable solution to the global water crisis.
The company uses proprietary liquid salts and renewable heat sources, including solar, biomass, and industrial waste heat, to absorb and condense atmospheric moisture into pure, mineral-rich water. Its modular systems currently serve India’s hospitality and beverage sectors, and the company has been expanding into data centre applications, where water demand for cooling is growing sharply alongside AI infrastructure buildout.
Uravu Labs has raised $6.07 million over multiple rounds, with its most recent Pre-Series A round led by Enrission India Capital, alongside Echo River Capital, Inflection Point Ventures, and AWE Funds. The Abu Dhabi placement gives Uravu a direct route into a region where water scarcity is not a policy talking point but an operational reality, and where governments are actively funding climate technology deployment at scale.
Endimension Technology: Fixing Radiology with AI
Endimension Technology addresses one of Indian healthcare’s most persistent structural problems. India has a radiologist-to-patient ratio of approximately 1:100,000, which is ten times worse than in the United States. For a country of over a billion people, India has only around 10,000 radiologists, and the retrospective error rate among radiologic examinations is approximately 30%.
Endimension develops AI algorithms to automatically detect abnormalities and diseases from medical scans, with its AI platform designed to spot patterns from chest radiographs and other imaging modalities, reducing instances of misdiagnoses and increasing radiologists’ efficiency. The company is part of the NVIDIA AI Inception Program and the Microsoft for Startups community, and its technology has been deployed across hospitals and radiology labs in India.
Endimension Technology was incubated at IIT Bombay and most recently raised Rs 6 crore in a Pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures, with additional participation from Sucseed Indovation and SINE IIT Bombay. The company will join Hub71’s Life Sciences specialist ecosystem, which includes six other startups focused on health innovation across the cohort.
The UAE is a logical expansion market for Endimension. The country has been investing heavily in AI healthcare infrastructure and has an established base of private hospital groups actively adopting diagnostic AI. Entry via Hub71 gives the startup regulatory guidance and institutional introductions that would otherwise take years to build independently.
The Broader Cohort
The 27 startups in Cohort 18 come from 12 countries, spanning pre-seed to Series A stages, and will enter either Hub71’s sector-agnostic Access Programme or one of its specialist tracks: Hub71+ Digital Assets, Hub71+ ClimateTech, and Hub71+ Life Sciences.
Notable names across the cohort include EchoTwin, a US-based startup that turns municipal vehicle fleets into real-time infrastructure sensing networks, and KPay, a Hong Kong-based fintech that has raised AED 238.7 million and is now expanding payment operations from Abu Dhabi. Seven startups join Hub71+ Life Sciences, six join Hub71+ Digital Assets, and five join Hub71+ ClimateTech.
The fact that 31% of applications came through Hub71’s partner and founder networks signals that the programme’s reputation is now strong enough to drive sourcing through community trust rather than outbound recruitment alone.
For Indian startups specifically, Hub71 is becoming an increasingly visible route to Middle East and global market access, particularly as UAE-India trade and investment ties deepen under CEPA. Both Uravu Labs and Endimension Technology now have a structured, well-resourced base to test that path.
