Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how heuristics affect Indian startup founders' strategic decision-making. It focuses on comprehending how founders employ cognitive shortcuts including representativeness, availability, and anchoring heuristics while making crucial choices in unpredictable situations.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The study uses a quantitative methodology and data gathered from 206 Indian startup founders across a range of industries. Heuristic usage and contextual variables were measured using a standardized questionnaire. To evaluate the connections between heuristics, contextual factors, and startup success, data were evaluated using descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), correlation analysis, and multiple and linear regression approaches.

Findings: The findings show that Indian company founders frequently make decisions based on heuristics. The most employed heuristics have been identified to be representativeness and availability. Furthermore, reliance on heuristics is greatly increased by contextual conditions including resource restrictions, time pressure, and market uncertainty. Heuristic utilization and perceived starting performance in dynamic contexts were found to be positively correlated.

Practical Implications: The results imply that systematic cognitive awareness training might help startups improve their decision-making procedures. Incubators as well as accelerators are examples of entrepreneurial support systems that can incorporate cognitive tools to assist entrepreneurs in optimizing the use of heuristics for strategic advantage..