Making Future Founders: Incubation centres, govt schemes are boosting startups, student entrepreneurship

Incubation centres across business schools are providing mentorship and programmes for more student-led startups to flourish. However, limited exposure and smaller networks still make it hard for student founders to access the right investors or navigate fundraising effectively, said Priyanka Chopra, chief operating officer and managing partner, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad Ventures, the incubation centre of the institute.

Institutes like IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Indian School of Business (ISB), Goa Institute of Management (GIM) and Amity University have set up incubation centres to support student led-startups. While some offer mentorship and entrepreneurship training, others also assist with acceleration of the ventures. The Atal Incubation Centres have a key role in this process.

Funding for early-stage startups is slow and that is where university-supported incubators step in. Chopra added, “The positive shift is that student-focused funds and university-linked incubators are now filling this gap, helping young founders build credibility and investment readiness early.”

Atal Incubation Centres

Many B-schools have set up Atal Incubation Centres, a Government of India initiative that promotes innovation and entrepreneurship with grants of upto Rs 10 crore for capital and operational expenditure. Institutes like ISB Hyderabad and GIM have centres through which they have created hubs and programmes to not only support in-house student ventures but also incubate outside startups as well.

Sumit Garg, chief operating officer, AIC-GIM said: “We offer an ‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ programme where students get to know the basic function of commencing a startup and learn to work on their own ideas.”

Similarly, ISB has two incubators: an AIC at its Mohali campus and D-Labs in Hyderabad. The second is supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). Madan M Pillutla, dean, ISB said that both centres jointly offer programmes on entrepreneurship education. “The whole idea for us is that we squarely offer entrepreneurship education, creating programmes around and mentoring startups broadly.”

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ISB noticed that many students from its flagship programmes don't immediately become entrepreneurs. “At ISB, the usual trend with people graduating from our PGP programme has been to get into job roles and then become entrepreneurs. However, through our I-Venture Immersive programme, we take students or professionals who want to do entrepreneurship and nothing else,” stated Pillutla. This is a six-month intensive programme where out of 50 students, 10 of the most motivated get seed-funding up to Rs 40 lakh.

The programmes also offer academic input, mentorship and advice. “We have already graduated two sets of students; a few have received funding because of the network at ISB,” added Pillutla.

Incubation centres, programmes

IIMA V has offered the IIMAvericks Fellowship since 2022. The institute’s entrepreneurship initiative gives students opting for entrepreneurship “a placement holiday” and structured support for pursuing entrepreneurship, including acceleration, pre-seed, and seed funding. “Startups like Zouk, Finshots, and Culture Circle have been part of this fellowship; more than 85 student founders have been supported by the IIMAvericks Fellowship,” stated Chopra.

Further, under the banner of IIMB Innovations, the Nadathur S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) has been incubating 50-60 student-led startups every year, across institutes in India, through its Campus Founders programme.

Anand Sri Ganesh, chief operating officer, IIMB Innovations said, “The programmes track works with ventures incorporated in universities and helps develop sound business models and scale paths. These ventures are usually innovations developed by students as part of their undergrad or post-grad work.” Ganesh added that founders of these student-led ventures typically are from engineering or applied sciences streams.

The NSRCEL ventures get seed grants to help with product development, testing and certification. “As part of incubation, ventures are exposed to investor networks. In a few high-growth cases, NSRCEL also co-invests with VCs in these startups,” he added.

Amity University has created multiple incubation centres. Ojasvi Babbar, chief operating officer, Amity Innovation Incubator said, “We have grown from a single location to multiple incubation centers, running multiple schemes through each Amity campus and helping startups with soft landing at different locations and giving them international exposure.”

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Babbar, currently leading the Noida centre, added that the institute has developed a comprehensive ecosystem. “We have created a 360 degree ecosystem through our incubation centers, physical locations, mentor world, which offers regular mentors to guide our startups, Amity Capital Ventures to accelerate funding." Currently, at Noida campus, 28 startups are incubated.

Incubation Centres: Student-led funding

“Founders tend to have a limited exposure to venture-building, and translating innovation to a financially-viable and scalable business model. This transformation from scientist-inventor to entrepreneur is crucial,” said Ganesh. Incubation centres are intended to address these gaps “through a combination of methods and frameworks, peer learning, mentorship, exposure to enabling business networks, and corporate innovation”.

“We also see many student-founders from non-metro towns, with excellent innovation and entrepreneurial orientation getting kickstarted through the centre,” added Ganesh.

Similarly, Chopra agreed that early-stage ventures are often hobbled by their relative lack of experience and exposure. “The most common hurdles are around networks and domain access, lack of leadership depth and talent retention. Student founders are typically entering industries where they have limited professional relationships, making it harder to find the right mentors, early customers, or strategic partners.”

Garg has observed that student-led startups have been receiving funding through various government initiatives like Startup India Seed Fund. “At AIC-GIM, we fund them under the Startup India Seed Fund or Startup Accelerator of MeitY for Product Innovation, Development, and Growth (SAMRIDH) schemes under the ministry of electronics and information technology which is available for these startups as well. Many of these student-led startups are participating in live projects as well,” added Garg.

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As the cost of infrastructure has reduced drastically over the last three-five years, more students are coming to campus, harbouring aspirations of founding businesses. “Reflecting a significant shift in career ambitions, students are proactively acquiring essential entrepreneurial skills in building products, ideation, and storytelling, in short, competencies that are crucial for launching and scaling successful ventures,” stated Chopra. Beyond classroom learning, these students are also interning at startups or smaller organisations to gain hands-on exposure in building ventures from the ground up.