AIC IIT Delhi (Atal Incubation Centre, IIT Delhi)

Choosing the right route in

AIC IIT Delhi runs three distinct routes rather than one generic incubation pipeline: the three-month Pre-Incubation Program for student entrepreneurs and aspiring founders who are still validating an idea, its main incubation track for startups ready to build in its labs and offices, and the two named industry-partnered initiatives — Bharat Byte with Cadence for semiconductor founders, and the Bharat Safety Program with Honda India Foundation for mobility and road-safety founders. Check which one matches your stage and sector before applying, since a student team validating a problem statement and a semiconductor startup wanting Cadence's involvement are different applications.

How applications work

All routes currently point to the same single incubation application form linked in the navigation of every page on the AIC IIT Delhi site, rather than separate forms per programme. There is no published breakdown of what the form asks for or how long a decision takes.

What the sectors tell you

AIC IIT Delhi calls itself sector-agnostic but names ten focus areas on its site — technical textile, semiconductor, energy and sustainability, manufacturing, transportation, health tech, robotics/AI/ML, sports tech, defence and aerospace, and agri tech. Its current incubated-startup list leans toward hardware and deep-tech: road safety and mobility devices, semiconductor design tooling, aerial platforms, and IoT and embedded systems all appear repeatedly. A founder working on a hardware or deep-tech product close to these areas is closer to what the Centre has actually incubated than a pure software or services idea would be.

What the labs suggest reviewers look for

The Centre's five labs — a metal-fabrication Workshop Lab, a digital-fabrication Makerspace Lab, a BioTech Lab, a compute-focused Mini AI Lab, and an IoT Lab — point to founders who need to build and test physical or embedded prototypes, not just write software. If your product needs machining, 3D printing, PCB work, wet-lab space or embedded hardware development, that maps directly onto what AIC IIT Delhi has built to support.

AIC IIT Delhi is an Atal Incubation Centre set up at IIT Delhi's Technopark (I-TEC) in Sonipat, Haryana. It is registered as a Section 8 non-profit company and is one of the incubation centres funded by the Atal Innovation Mission under NITI Aayog. The Centre was established in 2019 and describes itself as sector-agnostic, though its own site lists ten focus sectors.

What they support

AIC IIT Delhi names ten focus sectors on its site: technical textile, semiconductor, energy and sustainability, manufacturing, transportation, health tech, robotics, AI and ML, sports tech, defence and aerospace, and agri tech. Its incubated-startup listing bears this out — founders working on road safety and mobility hardware, semiconductor design tools, high-altitude aerial platforms, healthtech and medtech devices, and IoT and embedded systems all appear in its current portfolio.

Programmes

The Centre runs a recurring three-month Pre-Incubation Program for student entrepreneurs and aspiring founders, held on the IIT Delhi Sonipat campus. A new edition of this programme was listed as scheduled for late September 2026 on the Centre's own site.

In 2025 AIC IIT Delhi also launched two industry-partnered initiatives that its site still references: the Bharat Byte Semiconductor Accelerator, run with Cadence, aimed at semiconductor-focused deep-tech founders; and the Bharat Safety Program, run with Honda India Foundation, focused on mobility and road-safety innovation. Honda India Foundation's Senior Director also holds a seat on AIC IIT Delhi's board. Beyond naming the two programmes and their partners, the Centre's site does not currently carry programme-level detail such as duration or format for either.

AIC IIT Delhi also runs an annual flagship gathering, the Sonipat Startup Summit, first held in 2023 and now in a fourth edition as of 2026 per the Centre's own history page. The Summit brings together startups, investors, industry leaders, MSMEs and academia for pitching, mentoring and networking. A dedicated events page for the Summit was not available at the time of writing.

For all of these, the route in is a single incubation application form linked from every page on the site; there is no separate published eligibility page split out by programme.

Facilities and support

AIC IIT Delhi runs five named labs on its Sonipat campus. A Workshop Lab covers metal fabrication and machining, with a milling machine, a lathe machine, an electric arc welding machine, a spring coiling machine and SolidWorks design software. A Makerspace Lab covers digital fabrication, with PCB prototyping equipment, dual-head FDM and resin 3D printers, a laser engraving and cutting machine, and a digital storage oscilloscope. A BioTech Lab holds a bio incubator, an autoclave, a refrigerated bench-top centrifuge, an orbital shaking incubator and a hot air oven for early-stage biotech and life-science work. A Mini AI Lab provides compute infrastructure for machine-learning work, built on rack servers. An IoT Lab supplies Raspberry Pi kits, Arduino boards, sensor kits and connectivity modules for embedded and connected-device prototyping.

On the workspace side, incubated startups get a dedicated private office, with the Centre citing 100 to 200 square feet per startup and round-the-clock access, alongside a separate co-working floor of roughly 1,500 square feet. For meetings and events, the campus also has a Conference Hall seating around 100, a Seminar Hall seating around 400 with a dedicated stage, and a smaller Meeting Hall seating around 40.

Across its site, AIC IIT Delhi also describes connecting startups with industry, investors and government, and offering mentoring and IP guidance alongside growth-strategy support.

Track record

As of its most recent site update, AIC IIT Delhi states it has incubated 55-plus startups, onboarded 70-plus mentors, created over 200 jobs through its portfolio, and had 30-plus patents filed by its startups. Its own incubated-startups listing names 56 companies incubated between 2022 and 2026, with the largest single-year intake, 19 startups, in 2026 — a close match to its own headline count. These are the Centre's own published figures, not independently audited totals.

Who runs it

AIC IIT Delhi's board includes IIT Delhi's Director, its Dean of Corporate Relations, and the Head of its Department of Design, alongside external members including the Chairman of the Araina Group, the Managing Director of FITT (IIT Delhi's separate technology-transfer office), a professor from IIT Delhi's Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, and a Senior Director from Honda India Foundation. Day-to-day operations are led by a Chief Executive Officer, supported by a manager, a lab lead and a programme associate.

How to apply

AIC IIT Delhi's application route is a single incubation form linked from the main navigation of every page on its site. General enquiries can be sent to its role inbox, info@aic-iitd.in.