IIIT Hyderabad's incubator gets a booster shot: increases intake

This article is part of the series called Startup Hatch, about incubators and accelerators in the startup ecosystem.

International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad is an autonomous university that has an IIIT H Foundation which houses the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE). Started in 2008 but pretty much dormant until the past couple of years, the incubator now aims to provide an environment and an ecosystem for technology commercialization and entrepreneurial action.

The incubation center is now coming to action and has six startups that have graduated from the incubator. Operating out of a 10,000 sq. ft office space till now, IIIT-H has granted an additional 15,000 sq. ft. (a total of 25k sq. ft.) of space just for startups. Modelling it as a collaborative workspace, the batch intake has also increased.

A total of 20 startups have been incubated of which six have graduated. Of these six startups, two have raised further rounds of investment, two are growing rapidly year-on-year in revenue and margins and one has been acquired. They have been doing a decent job in terms of raising funds too:

“One of our foremost criteria in incubating startups is to see how technology-driven they are. The ideal startups for our centre are those that are commercializing research. Having said that, we also look at other startups which deliver significant value,” says Prashanth Meka, VP, Incubation Services & Industry Outreach at IIIT-H. "SETU is the CIE’s first company and with its support we have been able to be successful. The people at the Center are very well connected, capable and highly customer focused. They have been of enormous help to us and to every other startup at the CIE, at every stage, right from conception of the idea," says Prasad Pingali, CEO, Setu Software. Resonating Prasad, Chaitanya Sagar, the CEO of Perceptive Analytics  says that CIE helped them to focus on business and lay down a strong foundation. Since graduation, their revenue grew 7 times and manpower grew 3 times.

With plans of an accelerator in the pipeline, the current space is being shaped as a collaborative workplace. “We have recently added 150 desks of collaborative workspace, so there is ample space for our incubated companies to work out of here for a critical period of time. Once the startup grows in size or revenue, or has passed the phase where it needs handholding, we expect them to leave and make room for a new startup,”says Prashanth. Along with the workspace, the center regularly arranges for workshops and provides funding opportunities via investor connections.

Apply to be a part of the incubator HERE