Colleges set up incubators to nurture budding entrepreneurs

Although still in college you are a budding entrepreneur who would rather start a company of your own than work for someone else. You want guidance on how to go about but do not know where or who to turn to.

Noticing the wave of interest for entrepreneurship among students quite a few private colleges and education institutions in Bengaluru have set up their own startup incubators and innovation hubs to give wings to business ideas of their students.

At the Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship (XIME), Electronic City, a full-fledged incubation centre has been functioning for quite sometime now, and the institute wants to go a step further by setting up a startup ‘accelerator’ very soon.

12-month programme

“We have a 12-month incubation programme that can be further extended to another six months. The incubator, here, is not only for our students but even people from outside with viable ideas,” said Mukesh Hegde, Dean, Entrepreneurship Development, XIME.

The unique thing about the incubation centre at XIME, explained Mukesh, was the fact that it did not take any equity in the startups being incubated here. “We only take a nominal monthly rental and no equity,” Mukesh added.

Under a national scheme funded by the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) and supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Dayananda Sagar College, Kumarswamy Layout, has also set up its own incubation center called the Dayananda Sagar Entrepreneurship Research and Business Incubation (DERBI) Foundation.

Started as an entrepreneurship cell in college in 2008, it grew into a full-fledged incubation centre only last year. Presently, the incubator is located at Hosur Road and will be formally inaugurated within a month.

“It is a 300-seater premises complete with a number of facilities. Presently we have as many as 42 incubatees,” said Dr Lakshmi Jaganathan, Chairperson, Entrepreneurship Initiatives, Dayanand Sagar College.

Sachin Anchan, a former student of the college whose company is presently being an incubatee, said, “It was a question of just re-plugging back to my college. Whether I need a technical advisor or business mentoring, I have faculty at my college who I can bank upon and it becomes easy for me,” he said. Sachin’s company is working on providing data connection in rural areas using FM spectrum.

Under the said national scheme, Manipal University, Udupi, has set up the Manipal University Technology Business Incubator (MUTBI). Apart from this, nine engineering colleges  in the State have been selected as part of the ‘Karnataka New Age Incubation Network’, one of the propo­sals of Karnataka Informati­on Com­munication Tec­h­nology Group (KIG) 2020 report.