A journalist on a deadline does not have time to wait for you to reply to an email.
That sounds obvious. But most startups operate as if media coverage is a conversation that begins at the point of first contact. A journalist writes to ask for a logo. The founder replies three hours later. They ask for the founder’s headshot. Another round trip. They need a one-line description of what the company does that they can trust not to be inaccurate. By the time all of this has been exchanged, the story has moved on, the deadline has passed, or worse, the journalist has decided the startup is not media-ready enough to be worth the friction.
A press kit removes that friction entirely. It is not a marketing document. It is not a brochure. It is an operational asset, a package of everything a journalist, investor, or partner might need to tell your story accurately and quickly, assembled in advance and kept current. The startups that get covered consistently are rarely the most interesting. They are the most accessible. Their assets are ready. Their story is pre-articulated. Their contact information points to someone who actually picks up.
In India’s startup media environment, where publications like YourStory, Inc42, The Ken, Mint, and Business Standard Startup are covering hundreds of companies across a rapidly expanding ecosystem, the press kit is often what separates a startup that gets featured from one that gets deferred. The journalist chooses the easier story when two equally interesting pitches arrive at the same time.
What a Press Kit Actually Is (And What It Isn’t)
The term gets used loosely. In practice, a press kit for a startup is a centrally hosted, always-available collection of the materials a journalist needs to write about you without having to ask you for anything.
It is different from a pitch. A pitch is how you open the conversation with a journalist. A press kit is what they find when they decide to write the story. It is different from a media kit in the advertising sense, which is built to sell advertising space and focuses on audience demographics and pricing. A startup press kit is built for earned coverage, not paid placements.
It is also different from a pitch deck. A deck is for investors and is structured around the investment thesis. A press kit is for journalists, partners, and sometimes investors who need background context, and it is structured around making their job easy.
The single most important principle for a startup press kit is this: build it for someone who does not know you, who is moving fast, and who needs to be accurate. Every decision about what to include and how to present it should run through that filter.
The Core Elements Every Startup Press Kit Needs
The company boilerplate. This is the foundation. A boilerplate is a short, precise description of what the company does, written in a way that can be lifted directly into any story about you and published without modification. It should be 80 to 100 words. It should cover what the company does, who it serves, what makes it different, and one or two verifiable facts about its scale or reach. No adjectives like “revolutionary,” “innovative,” or “game-changing.” Only claims that can be independently checked.
A well-constructed boilerplate follows the logic of: what you do, for whom, why it matters, and one concrete fact. For example: “Razorpay provides payment infrastructure for Indian businesses, enabling them to accept, process, and disburse payments through a single platform. The company serves over 5 million businesses across India, including enterprises, SMEs, and startups. Founded in 2014 and backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital India, Razorpay is one of India’s most widely used business payment platforms.” Every sentence there is verifiable. None of it is self-congratulatory.
The company fact sheet. One page, structured for quick scanning. This should include: year of founding, headquarters city, total funding raised with round breakdown if public, number of employees, number of customers or users if the metric is meaningful, key sectors or verticals served, names of investors or accelerator affiliations, and links to the company’s website and social accounts. If you are DPIIT-recognised, include that. If you have notable partnerships with established companies, list them. Everything here should be a fact, not a claim.
Founder and team bios. Short, specific, and third-person. Each bio should be 50 to 100 words and include: the founder’s name and title, their educational or professional background as it is relevant to the company, one or two prior experiences that establish credibility in this specific domain, and a note about what they own within the company. No generic phrases like “passionate entrepreneur” or “visionary leader.” A journalist writing about your company will often drop a sentence about the founder directly from the bio you provide. Write it the way you would want to see it in print.
Logo and brand asset package. Provide high-resolution versions in multiple formats: PNG with transparent background, SVG if available, JPEG on white background, and a dark-mode version if you have one. Include clear and concise usage guidance. Specify what colours are in your brand palette with their hex codes. If your logo has a wordmark and a standalone icon, provide both separately. Journalists and designers who want to illustrate a story about your company should be able to download what they need without sending you a single email.
Founder and team photographs. Professional headshots, minimum 2MB file size, downloadable in full resolution. These should be clean, contemporary, and taken in a setting that reflects the company’s character. A SaaS startup that claims to be a modern company should not have its founder photographed in a setting that looks like a 2010 stock photo. Include at least one candid team photo if available, as editorial images benefit from variety.
Product screenshots and images. If your product is visual, include at least three to five high-resolution screenshots showing core functionality. If you have lifestyle or in-context images of your product in use, include those. Label everything clearly. A journalist writing about your company in print or online needs images they can use without guessing what they are looking at.
Prior press coverage. List and link to every significant media mention the company has received, beginning with the most credible and most recent. This section signals two things simultaneously: that other journalists have found the company worth writing about, and that the company has been covered accurately before, which reduces the journalist’s perceived risk. If you have been featured in YourStory, Inc42, Mint, or Economic Times, those links belong here prominently.
A media contact. A named person, an email address that is monitored, and ideally a phone number or WhatsApp number for urgent inquiries. This should not be a generic info@ address. It should be a founder, a communications lead, or a dedicated PR contact whose job includes responding to journalist inquiries within the same business day. Journalists on deadlines do not follow up twice.
The Boilerplate Is Not the Brand Story
This needs to be said separately because founders get it wrong so often.
The boilerplate is what journalists use when they need a factual description of your company in a hurry. The brand story is what you use when you have a journalist’s attention and want to make them care. These are two different things and they live in two different places.
A brand story for a press kit is a slightly longer narrative, three to four short paragraphs, that answers: why this company was started, what problem it is solving and for whom, what makes this particular approach different from what existed before, and where the company is headed. It is not a sales document and it is not a pitch. It is context. It gives a journalist who is writing a profile or a feature story something to work from so that they do not have to conduct an entire background interview before they can write a word.
The best brand stories read like the founding memo the company wrote to itself before it had any press attention. They are honest about the specific insight that created the company, specific about the problem rather than vague about the market, and written in language a reader outside the industry would understand without effort.
Format: Digital Page Over PDF
This is a 2026 standard, not a preference. A press kit that lives as a downloadable PDF is a static document that becomes outdated the moment your team adds a person, your funding changes, or your user number crosses a meaningful threshold. It also requires a journalist to download something, open it, search through it, and identify what they need, all steps that create friction you should be eliminating.
A press kit that lives as a dedicated page on your website, accessible at a URL like yourcompany.com/press, is always current, searchable, and immediately accessible. Journalists can find it through your website, through a Google search for your company name, or through a direct link you include in your pitch. The assets should be downloadable from that page, but the information should be readable without downloading anything.
Maintain a PDF version as well for situations where a journalist or investor requests something they can save offline. But treat the web page as the primary format and keep it current.
What to Leave Out
Most startup press kits are too long, and the excess is almost always in the same places.
Leave out your investor deck. Leave out your full product documentation. Leave out customer case studies longer than a paragraph. Leave out any claim you cannot back with a verifiable fact. Leave out logos from companies that have not publicly announced a partnership with you.
Leave out the CEO’s personal philosophy section. Leave out awards from organisations no journalist has heard of. Leave out your complete company history if the company is under five years old. Leave out testimonials from customers who have not given permission for public attribution.
The principle is the same as the principle that governs good pitching: your job is to make the journalist’s job easier, not to tell them everything you know about yourself. The press kit should give a journalist enough to write an accurate, credible story about your company. Everything beyond that is clutter that slows them down.
When to Build It and When to Update It
Build a basic press kit before you start any active media outreach. The minimum viable version is: a boilerplate, a fact sheet, logos, founder headshots, and a media contact. That takes a few hours and significantly increases the professional signal you send the first time a journalist engages with your company.
Update it whenever: you close a new funding round, you cross a meaningful customer or revenue milestone, you make a significant hire, you announce a major partnership, or you add a notable media mention. The press kit should always reflect the current company, not the company as it was six months ago. A journalist who finds outdated information in your press kit may either publish the outdated information or decide you are not worth the effort of clarification.
What a Press Kit Does Beyond Media Coverage
A press kit is not only a journalist resource. Once it exists, it serves at least three other audiences that matter to an early-stage startup.
Investors. An investor doing background research on your company will find the press kit useful in exactly the way a journalist does: it gives them accurate information, signals professional organisation, and shows that other credible media have found the company worth covering. A strong press coverage section in a press kit is social proof that carries weight in due diligence.
Potential hires. A senior operator evaluating whether to join your company will often Google you before they agree to a first conversation. A press kit with clean assets, clear coverage, and an honest brand story builds credibility with candidates who want to understand what they are joining before they commit.
Partners. A potential distribution partner, enterprise customer, or integration partner evaluating your company for a commercial relationship wants to know who you are and whether you are real. A press kit answers those questions quickly and without requiring an introductory call.
A Quick Reference: Press Kit Checklist for Indian Startups
| Element | What to Include | Common Mistakes |
| Company boilerplate | 80-100 words, factual, no adjectives | Too long, full of marketing language |
| Fact sheet | Founding year, team size, funding, customers, investors | Outdated numbers, unverified claims |
| Founder bios | 50-100 words, third-person, domain-specific credibility | Generic “passionate entrepreneur” phrasing |
| Logos | PNG transparent, SVG, JPEG, dark mode variant with hex codes | Low-res only, one format, no usage guidance |
| Founder photos | High-res headshots, min 2MB, downloadable | Stock-looking, low resolution, not downloadable |
| Product images | 3-5 high-res screenshots or in-context images, labelled | Only mobile screenshots, not labelled |
| Prior coverage | Linked list, most credible and recent first | Outdated, includes irrelevant or low-credibility mentions |
| Media contact | Named person, monitored email, WhatsApp if possible | Generic info@ address, no phone number |
| Brand story | 3-4 paragraph narrative of why, who, what, and where | Too long, reads like a pitch deck |
The Take Nobody Will Say Out Loud
Most press kit advice focuses on what to include. The real problem is different: most startups do not have a press kit because they are waiting until they feel ready for media attention. They are waiting for a funding announcement, a product launch, a customer milestone. Some press kit, they tell themselves, is waiting for the right moment.
There is no right moment. A journalist who calls today about a trend story that includes your category cannot wait for you to feel ready. An investor introduced to your company tomorrow through a mutual contact will Google you tonight. The press kit that does not exist yet is the one that sends them somewhere else.
The other thing that does not get said: a press kit is a forcing function for clarity. Building one requires you to write the boilerplate, which requires you to compress what the company does into 100 words. It requires you to name the verifiable facts about what you have built. It requires you to take a professional photograph and get it done. These are all things a serious company should have done anyway. The press kit just creates the deadline.
If building yours reveals that you cannot write a clean boilerplate yet, or that the facts are not impressive enough to state plainly, those are useful discoveries. The company that cannot describe itself in 100 accurate words has a messaging problem that no amount of media outreach will solve.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should a startup build a press kit? Before any active media outreach begins. The minimum viable press kit takes a few hours to assemble and should exist before you send a single pitch to a journalist. If you are already pitching without one, build it this week.
Should a press kit be a PDF or a web page? A web page hosted at yourcompany.com/press is the primary format in 2026. It is always current, immediately accessible, and requires no download. Maintain a PDF version as a backup for journalists or investors who request something they can save offline, but do not treat the PDF as the primary format.
What if we haven’t raised funding or have no press coverage yet? Build the kit with what you have. A clean boilerplate, a credible fact sheet with real customer numbers, professional photos, and a well-written brand story is enough to be media-ready. The prior coverage section can be empty or minimal at the start. It will grow. The kit gives it somewhere to grow into.
How often should we update the press kit? Whenever a material fact changes: new funding, new headcount milestone, new customer numbers, new media mentions, new partnerships. A press kit that is more than six months out of date sends a signal to journalists and investors that the company is not actively growing or not paying attention to its own narrative.
Should the press kit be publicly accessible or password protected? Public, always. A password-protected press kit defeats the purpose. Journalists who find friction access another startup’s kit. Investors who have to request access form a different impression than you intend. Anything sensitive enough to require a password does not belong in the press kit.
Can we include customer testimonials and case studies? Keep these short and attributed. A one or two sentence testimonial with the customer’s name, title, and company is appropriate if you have permission. A full case study belongs on your website, not in the press kit. Journalists looking for quick background information do not want to read case studies.
What is the one element most startups forget? A named, monitored media contact with a real email address and a phone number. Most startup press kits list a generic info@ email that nobody checks promptly. A journalist on a same-day deadline who cannot reach a human at your company will write the story without your input, or not write it at all.
Sources
- Prezly — Press kit components, structure, and digital format best practices — https://www.prezly.com/academy/press-kit-101-what-to-include-to-get-earned-media-coverage
- Shopify India — Press kit creation guide; company facts, logos, prior coverage, format guidance — https://www.shopify.com/in/blog/linkedin-personal-branding (cross-referenced with Shopify press kit article)
- Agility PR Solutions — 9 essential elements of a press or media kit — https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/content-media-relations/how-to-create-an-amazing-press-or-media-kit-9-essentials-to-include/
- Propllr Blog — Boilerplate writing formula: aspiration + benefits + products/services + size — https://blog.propllr.com/the-perfect-boilerplate-equation-aspiration-benefits-products-size
- Berbay Marketing — Boilerplate length (100 words), what to include and exclude — https://www.berbay.com/press-release-boilerplate/
- eReleases — Press kit guide for small businesses; format, hosting, and content decisions — https://www.ereleases.com/ultimate-press-kit-guide-small-businesses-definition-components-examples/
- PRnews.io — Modern media kit strategy; dynamic digital hub vs static document — https://prnews.io/blog/media-kit.html
- Atom Communication — Indian startup media publications; YourStory, Inc42, The Ken, Mint, Economic Times Tech as primary coverage targets — https://atomcomm.in/media-coverage-for-indian-tech-startups/
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