Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on a study of the institutional repositories (IRs) in use in Indian universities and research institutes. Design/methodology/approach: Repositories in various institutions in India were accessed and described in a standardised way. Findings: The 20 repositories studied covered collections of diverse types. Most of these collections have unique content. Originality/value: The goal of this study is to study the IR software and data based on the content type, metadata and characteristics. The paper also describes the collections and some important observations from this study. (Contains 1 table and 5 figures.)