IHFC, IIT Delhi

Work out which IIT Delhi body you want

IHFC, FITT and the Atal Incubation Centre at IIT Delhi are three different organisations with three different application routes. IHFC is the one for cobotics, robotics, AI, drones and autonomous systems, and its forms sit on its own application portal. If the form you have been sent is not IHFC's, you are applying to a different organisation.

Pick the right route in

• A student or recent graduate with a deep-tech idea: the READY programme. It is six months, gives you lab space at IIT Delhi and grant support, and names you as an author or inventor of the IP.
• A company at seed stage or later: Startup Incubation.
• A working prototype in health, agriculture, industry or defence: watch for the matching Synapse call and apply when it opens.
• A registered company that wants facility access and connections rather than money: the membership programme, which says outright that it provides no funding.
• A lab technology you want to take to market: the technology-transfer call.

How applications work

• READY takes proposals all year. Screening, evaluation and pitches happen quarterly, in February, May, August and November. Students are onboarded in January and July; graduates within a year or two of finishing can join more flexibly.
• Incubation applications go through the Apply button on the startup incubation page. You can also write to contact@ihfc.co.in or call the office with your idea, your technology readiness level and prototype, your proposal and what you want from IHFC.
• Synapse calls and the technology-transfer call each have their own dated announcement page and their own form. Check the deadline on the page, not on a listing.
• Drone testing and training at the Sonipat facility is arranged separately, by email to the drone park team.

What you need to be eligible

• You do not need an incorporated company to be considered. IHFC will look at a collaborative robotics idea or a research result either way. But money only moves after the inventor or IP holder forms a company, so start the incorporation early if you expect funding.
• You do not have to relocate. IHFC says incubation does not have to be physical and that a company based elsewhere in India can still be incubated.
• Synapse calls want a working prototype, at technology readiness level 4 or above.
• The membership programme takes registered entities only — individuals are not considered.

How selection works

Every route goes to the same expert panel: IHFC's director and chief executive, a financial expert, an industry expert and IIT Delhi professors. IHFC states that a personal connection to IHFC or IIT Delhi will not get you past it. After the panel, proposals go to the board of directors, then to a memorandum of understanding, then funding allocation, then execution and monitoring, and finally onboarding.

What reviewers look for

• A fit with cobotics — robots and systems that work with people — in one of IHFC's four areas: medical, agriculture, industry, defence.
• Evidence you have built something. IHFC's own descriptions lean on prototypes, technology readiness level and products designed to be feasible on reliability, technical specification and cost.
• A route to commercialisation. IHFC's stated objective is to get products to market, and its technology-transfer call exists specifically to close the gap between a lab result and a shipped product.
• For a Synapse call, a named industry or clinical partner helps: these calls are run with partners and accept consortium applications.

Before you apply

IHFC's pages disagree with each other on a few counts — how many innovation centres it has, and which application form is current for the READY programme, where the page carries two different links. Use the link nearest the programme description, and if the two differ, email contact@ihfc.co.in and ask which one is open.

I-Hub Foundation for Cobotics, known as IHFC, is the Technology Innovation Hub of IIT Delhi. It was set up in June 2020 by the Department of Science and Technology under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems, and it is a Section 8 not-for-profit company in its own right, with its own board and its own chief executive. Its offices are at the Research and Innovation Park on the IIT Delhi campus at Hauz Khas, New Delhi, with more space at Vishwakarma Bhawan on the same campus and a drone facility at IIT Delhi's Sonipat campus in Haryana.

Its subject is cobotics — robots that work alongside people rather than replacing them — applied to four areas: medical, agriculture, industry and defence. It runs four mandates: research and development, entrepreneurship and startups, skills and training, and international collaborations.

Which IIT Delhi body is this

IIT Delhi has more than one organisation that supports founders, and they are separate legal entities. IHFC is the DST-funded innovation hub for cobotics. FITT, the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer, is a different organisation — IHFC lists it on its own academic partners page, next to IIT Delhi itself, as a partner rather than as part of itself. One IHFC startup describes itself as supported by IHFC and by FITT separately. There is also an Atal Incubation Centre associated with IIT Delhi, which IHFC's site does not mention at all. If a programme is run by IHFC, its application form sits on IHFC's own portal; FITT and the Atal centre use a different one. So when someone says "the IIT Delhi incubator", check which of the three they mean before you apply.

How the startup side works

IHFC names three routes for founders. The READY programme is the pre-seed route: a six-month programme for students and recent graduates who want to build and prototype a deep-tech product, with grant support, mentorship, lab space at IIT Delhi, and the applicant named as an author or inventor of the resulting intellectual property. Applications are accepted all year, screening and pitches happen quarterly in February, May, August and November, students are onboarded in January and July, and graduates within a year or two of finishing can join on a more flexible schedule.

Startup Incubation is the main route for companies. IHFC says it supports startups at seed, early, growth and expansion stages. What incubated startups get is listed as co-working and co-location space, business support services, soft credits from corporate partners, help with technology development, research and upskilling, chances to showcase, networking, fundraising help, market access and mentoring. Startup Acceleration is named as the third route, but IHFC publishes no eligibility, length or intake for it, so treat it as something that happens to incubated startups rather than as a separate door.

Alongside these, IHFC runs domain-specific funding calls it brands Synapse — one each for agriculture, industry, defence and health. These are proposal calls with named industry partners, each with its own deadline, and they are open to research institutions, hospitals, faculty-led startups, companies and consortia, not only to incubated startups.

Who can apply

IHFC's own answers are unusually clear on two points founders get wrong. First, you do not need a company to be considered: IHFC says it will look at collaborative robotics ideas or research whether or not you have a company set up, but that money only follows once the researcher, inventor or IP holder has incorporated one. Second, you do not have to move: IHFC says not all incubation has to be physical, and a company with an office elsewhere in India can still be incubated.

The Synapse calls are stricter. SwasthyaTech Synapse asks for a technology at technology readiness level 4 or above, meaning a working prototype. The membership programme is for registered entities only and says individual applications will not be considered.

Selection runs through an expert panel made up of IHFC's director and chief executive plus a financial expert, an industry expert and IIT Delhi professors. IHFC states plainly that knowing someone at IHFC or IIT Delhi will not get an application past that panel. The full funnel it publishes is: call for proposals, first shortlisting, expert evaluation, review by the board of directors, a memorandum of understanding, funding allocation, execution and monitoring, and then onboarding at IHFC.

Facilities

The Research and Innovation Park building on the IIT Delhi campus houses IHFC's office and many of its incubated teams. Vishwakarma Bhawan, also on campus, has space for startups and hosts IHFC's education and training programmes. The Drone Technology Park at IIT Delhi's Sonipat campus, set up with Jet Aerospace, has a forty-acre flying area, a three-thousand-square-foot skilling area, simulators and testing equipment, and is open to startups, industry, students and professionals for drone and systems testing arranged by email. A Medical Cobotics Centre, run with iHub Anubhuti at IIIT Delhi, is announced as coming soon.

Beyond its own buildings, IHFC has set up Co-Innovation Centres with partner institutions around the country, including IIEST Shibpur, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, IIIT Delhi, Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology, IIT Gandhinagar, Thapar Institute, Delhi Technological University, Karunya Institute, SGT University, Maulana Azad Medical College and PES University in Bengaluru. How many there are depends which page you read: the facilities page and the homepage counter say fourteen, a homepage tile says ten, thirteen are actually named, and the membership page says fifteen innovation facilities.

Scale

IHFC's homepage reports sixty ongoing research projects, fifty-two ongoing startup projects, forty technologies developed and 1,04,822 people reached through its work. These are its own figures, undated, and the people figure counts training and education reach, not startups. Its startup ecosystem page names fifty-three ventures, among them Articulus Surgical, Exobot, IVF Precisions, TSAW Drones, Xterra Robotics, Kelvin6k, NeuroDrishti, Mountford Health and 8OL Robotics. Its partner pages count thirty-six academic partners, thirty-one industry and government partners, twenty-six nurture partners and six venture capital partners.

Who runs it and how it is funded

Prof. S. K. Saha is project director and Ashutosh Dutt Sharma is chief executive. IHFC says DST support runs for five years, after which it must generate its own revenue to keep going — and since it was incorporated in June 2020, that window is at or near its end. Its investor relations page still describes its work as supported by DST grants and by sponsored research projects from government and industry. IHFC is recognised by DST as a scientific research institution, and is registered under sections 12A and 80G of the Income Tax Act, for corporate social responsibility funding, and under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

Locations, careers and events

The corporate office is in Block A of the Research and Innovation Park at IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016; the registered office is at MZ-122 on the same campus. The Sonipat site is at IIT Delhi's Sonipat campus in Rajiv Gandhi Education City, Haryana. IHFC has a careers page that lists openings when it has them, and it announces calls, challenges and workshops on its important announcements page.