nasscom CoE – IoT & AI

Choosing the right route

There is really one route for founders: the Startups Program, applied for through the incubation application form on the Centre's site. Decide first whether you want physical or virtual incubation, because the form asks on the first screen. Physical means a seat at one of the four centres, and the form asks how many seats you need, so work that out before you start. Virtual keeps you where you are and gives you the programme support without the desk.

The Co-create Program is not something you apply to directly. It is the enterprise side of the Centre — companies bring problems, the Centre scouts startups to match. The way in is to be known to the Centre, which in practice means being incubated or getting in touch with the co-innovate enquiry inbox.

How applications work

The form is long and it wants substance, not a summary. Have ready:

• the technologies and the verticals you work on
• whether you have a hardware product
• any copyright or patents applied for or granted
• a hundred words on how your solution beats what is already on the market
• founder profiles, with LinkedIn links
• your reasons for wanting incubation — infrastructure, technical help, business help or funds — and what you expect to get out of being at the Centre
• number of seats you need, your funding stage, your current revenue and a current address
• a pitch deck as a file, under 10 MB

If the form will not submit, the Centre asks you to email your pitch deck instead. General enquiries go to co-innovate@nasscom.in.

How selection works

The Centre publishes four things it looks for: technology-led innovation, the team, product-market fit and impact. It does not publish a selection timeline, a panel, an interview stage or intake dates, so treat applications as rolling and follow up rather than waiting.

What reviewers look for

The questions tell you what matters. Two of them carry the weight — how your solution is better than what exists, and why you want incubation. Answer the second one concretely: name the equipment you need, the kind of enterprise you want introducing, or the specific gap in your team. "Infrastructure and mentoring" says nothing.

The Centre's value is enterprise pilots and lab access rather than money, so a strong application shows a product that a large company could actually run a pilot on. If you are a hardware team, say what you need from the lab — signal generation, oscilloscope work, prototyping — because that is what the Centre built it for. If your work sits in agritech, healthtech, Industry 4.0, energy, water, cleantech, automotive or smart cities, say so plainly: those are the spaces the Centre says it prefers even though it calls itself sector agnostic.

Questions worth asking first

The Centre does not state whether incubation is charged or whether it takes a stake. Ask both before you sign anything, and ask which of the four centres would host you, since the Gurugram, Bengaluru, Gandhinagar and Visakhapatnam sites sit in very different ecosystems.

nasscom CoE – IoT & AI is a centre of excellence for deep-tech startups working on the internet of things, artificial intelligence and machine learning, analytics, AR/VR and robotics. It is run by nasscom with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology as a Digital India initiative, and it works out of four centres — Gurugram, Bengaluru, Gandhinagar and Visakhapatnam. The Centre for IoT was announced in July 2015 and the CoE itself was set up in July 2016.

Its stated purpose is narrow and practical: help Indian deep-tech startups and companies use new technology to build market-ready products, and build the talent and ecosystem around them. It does that through what it calls its FAME model — funding, incubation, acceleration, mentor support and enterprise connect — and through a Startups Program that combines space, lab access and introductions to large companies.

How the programmes work

There is one main way in for founders: the Startups Program, which the Centre runs as incubation. You choose when you apply whether you want physical incubation, meaning a desk at one of the centres, or virtual incubation, meaning you keep your own base and take the programme's support remotely. The application asks how many seats you need, so physical incubation is sized to your team rather than sold as a fixed package.

Alongside incubation the Centre runs a Co-create Program, which works from the enterprise side. A company brings a problem it has not been able to solve with off-the-shelf technology, and the Centre scouts startups that fit it and introduces them, with the stated aim of turning that into orders, go-to-market arrangements, acquisitions or investment. For a founder this is the reason to be here rather than at a general incubator: the Centre's pitch is enterprise pilots and market validation, not a cheque.

The Centre also says it works with central and state governments and departments to open up opportunities for startups selling to government, and that it takes startups on international trade delegations to reach communities outside India.

Who can apply

The Centre describes itself as sector agnostic, while naming the spaces it prefers: agritech, healthtech, Industry 4.0, energy, water, cleantech, automotive and smart cities. Underneath that, the technologies it exists for are IoT, AI and machine learning, data science and analytics, AR/VR and robotics.

It does not publish a formal eligibility rule — no company-age bar, no incorporation requirement, no state restriction is stated. What it does publish is what it looks for in an application: technology-led innovation, the team, product-market fit, and impact. The application form asks for the technologies and verticals you work on, whether you have a hardware product, any copyright or patents applied for or granted, how your solution beats what already exists, founder profiles, your reasons for wanting incubation, your funding stage, your current revenue and a pitch deck. Read together, that is a Centre expecting a working product and some evidence of a market, rather than an idea.

The Centre does not state on its site whether incubation is free or charged, or whether it takes equity. Ask before you commit.

Facilities

The Centre built an electronics lab for hardware teams, on the argument that hardware startups need more than a desk and fast internet. It lists a vector signal generator, a 500 MHz oscilloscope, a digital multimeter and development kits among the equipment, and says incubated startups get shared access to an in-house lab with prototyping, design and testing tools.

Incubated startups also get round-the-clock access to office space and the digital and physical infrastructure that goes with it, plus deals and credits from the Centre's vetted service partners. An in-house team works with startups as a shared resource on hiring and team building, refining the business model, startup metrics and workshops.

Scale

The Centre's Startups page names 42 startups, among them Peer Robotics, Lithion Power, BharatRohan Airborne Innovations, Tech Eagle Innovations, Algo8, Torchit and Marbles Health. It does not say which of those are currently incubated and which have graduated, and it publishes no total for startups supported, funding raised or jobs created, so we carry no figures for this Centre. Treat any number you see quoted elsewhere as unverified until the Centre states it itself.

Locations

The Gurugram centre is inside the Hartron Innovation Hub in Udyog Vihar Phase 1, on the Old Delhi–Gurugram road. The Bengaluru centre is in Diamond District on HAL Airport Road. The Gandhinagar centre sits inside IIT Gandhinagar at Palaj, and the Visakhapatnam centre is on the north campus of Andhra University, opposite the Department of Marine Engineering.

What to know before you rely on this page

The Centre's public website is a WordPress site that has not been substantially refreshed in some time. Most of its pages were last modified between 2017 and 2022; the About, Contact and Partners pages were touched in January 2025 and the Startups page in March 2026. Its events section stops at 2021, several named past challenges are still in the menus with no live call, and some of its own internal links point at a domain that no longer resolves. The incubation application form itself renders and works, and the enquiry inbox is current, so those are the two routes worth using. A second nasscom address, a use-case management portal, sits behind a login and shows nothing to a visitor who does not have an account.