RIIDL, Somaiya Vidyavihar University

Pick the right door first

• If you want space, mentoring and a place in the ecosystem, apply to incubation or pre-incubation. It is one form and riidl routes you between the two tracks.
• If all you need is a machine — a 3D printer, the media kit, the AR/VR rig or bench time in the bio lab — book the lab directly instead. You do not have to be incubated, and it is much faster.
• If you only need a desk or an office, there is a separate rental-space form.
• The government schemes are not something you apply to cold. Get incubated first; riidl puts its own startups forward.

How the application works

• The form is called Application for Pre-incubation / Incubation and it is short: startup name, whether you are registered as a Private Limited company, your stage, your industries, whether you are from Somaiya Vidyavihar University, a pitch deck and where you heard about riidl.
• Your legal structure decides the track. Private Limited goes to incubation; any other structure, or no registration yet, goes to pre-incubation. Do not delay the form to incorporate first — pre-incubation is the route designed for you.
• Outside founders are welcome. Answer the Somaiya question honestly; if you are a current student, alumni or faculty member you will be asked which college.
• Stage is a dropdown, from idea through proof of concept or prototype, MVP ready, seed and angel, to pre-Series A and above. Pick the one that matches what you can show today rather than where you hope to be.
• riidl has attached reference material on building a pitch deck to the form. Read it before you upload.
• After you submit, riidl says to check your email in a few minutes for next steps. It does not publish a timeline beyond that.

What to have ready

• A pitch deck. It is part of the form, not a later step.
• A clear statement of what you have actually built. riidl's labs, its in-house expertise in IT, electronics, microbiology, marketing and business development, and its prototyping history all point the same way: it is set up for teams making something, and it responds to work you can show.
• Incorporation details if you have them, and a realistic answer on your stage.

If you are aiming at a government scheme

• For the Maharashtra seed fund, you must be a startup registered in Maharashtra, be incubated with or supported by an approved incubator when you apply, and have a business plan plus a prototype, MVP or proof of concept.
• For the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, you need DPIIT recognition and to have been incorporated no more than two years before you apply.
• For NIDHI-SSS you need to be a technology startup incorporated as a private limited company, past proof of concept, and incubated at a NIDHI-recognised incubator for at least six months. riidl's page says the process runs to three or four months and that the scheme takes equity.
• None of these pages carries a riidl deadline. Ask riidl directly when its next window is rather than waiting for the site to announce one.

Worth knowing before you write

• riidl publishes no fee, tenure or equity term for its own incubation, and no charges for lab time or space. Ask for all of it in writing.
• Its contact page shows a general enquiry address, but the link behind it is broken, so type the address rather than clicking it.
• The programmes are sector-wide but the lab set is distinctive — fabrication, bio, AI/ML, AR/VR and media. A team whose product needs one of those will get more out of riidl than a pure software team.

riidl — Research Innovation Incubation Design Labs — is the incubator of Somaiya Vidyavihar University in Vidyavihar, Mumbai. It says it was born in 2010, when three of its founders proposed a space for turning ideas into things and the university's chancellor backed it. Today it runs an incubation and pre-incubation intake, five bookable labs, a set of government funding programmes and several corporate programmes built with partners such as HDFC Bank, HDFC Life and OmniActive Health Technologies.

How programmes work

There are three different ways in, and they suit different people.

The first is incubation. One form covers both tracks, and your legal structure decides which one you land in: a startup registered as a Private Limited company is considered for incubation, and anything else — an LLP, a partnership, or a team that has not registered at all — is considered for pre-incubation. riidl describes the programme as hybrid and lists expert-led workshops, one-to-one mentoring, funding support, access to its labs, legal and IP help, cloud credits and global exposure. It does not publish a tenure, a fee or an equity term.

The second is the government funding route. riidl groups these on its own site under Govt Funding Programs: NIDHI-SSS, NIDHI-EIR and NIDHI PRAYAS from the Department of Science and Technology, the Maharashtra State Innovation Society seed fund, the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, and MeitY's SAMRIDH scheme. Each has its own page explaining the national scheme, and most carry a gallery of the startups riidl has supported under it. What those pages do not carry is a riidl-specific application form or an intake date, so the practical route is to be incubated at riidl first and be put forward from there. Two of these pages name the person to speak to — the chief investment officer for NIDHI-SSS and the programme manager for the Maharashtra seed fund.

The third is the corporate and partner programmes. SoilBox, run with OmniActive Health Technologies' Innovation Leadership Fund, backs agriculture and climate startups with grant support and mentoring, and riidl publishes field-visit reports from its cohorts. Under HDFC Parivartan it runs a manufacturing acceleration programme for impact-driven startups across agritech, deep tech, EV infrastructure, smart mobility, sustainability and industrial automation. Futurance, built with HDFC Life, is an open-innovation call for MedTech, MarTech and HRTech startups that ended in a demo day and proof-of-concept work with the insurer. None of these publish an open application form, so they run as announced cohorts rather than rolling intakes.

Who can apply

Outside founders can apply. The application form asks whether you are from Somaiya Vidyavihar University and offers a Non-Somaiya option, so this is not a students-only centre — though current students, alumni and faculty of the university are explicitly invited too, and are asked which Somaiya college they are from.

The only hard gate riidl publishes is the legal-structure one described above. The stages it accepts run the whole way from idea, through proof of concept or prototype, MVP ready and seed or angel stage, to pre-Series A and above. Sector is open: the form's own industry list includes deep tech and robotics, and the programmes riidl runs span agritech, climate, health, biotech, IT and AI, manufacturing, insurance and design.

The government schemes carry their own eligibility, which riidl restates on each page. The Maharashtra seed fund is for startups registered in Maharashtra and asks for a business plan and a prototype or proof of concept. The Startup India Seed Fund Scheme is for DPIIT-recognised startups incorporated no more than two years before applying. NIDHI-SSS is for technology startups incorporated as private limited companies that have finished proof of concept and have been incubated at a NIDHI-recognised incubator for at least six months, and it takes equity.

Facilities

riidl lists five labs, and each one can be booked directly through its booking page — you do not have to be incubated to get lab time, which is unusual and is the fastest route in for a team that needs a machine rather than a desk. The labs are a digital fabrication lab with 3D printers and precision machines, a media lab for multimedia production and editing, an AI/ML lab, an AR/VR lab, and a bio lab.

The bio lab, bioriidl, is the one that stands out. riidl calls it India's first DIY bio lab and bio-incubator, says it is supported by the Department of Biotechnology and BIRAC, and records that Prof. George Church of Harvard Medical School inaugurated it in 2020. BIRAC's own BioNEST directory lists riidl as one of its bio-incubators. riidl also registered as a Fab Lab with the Fab Foundation and MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms in 2015-16.

Alongside the labs, incubation includes round-the-clock access to workspace, high-speed WiFi, meeting rooms and lockers. A separate form covers rental of workspace and office facilities. No charges are published for either the labs or the space.

Scale

riidl's own numbers are self-reported and undated, and its pages do not always agree. Its homepage impact block, headed "Our Impact (2016 to Present)", claims 300+ startups incubated, 200+ publications and awards, 17,000+ students trained, 3,000+ startups impacted through community initiatives, 17 research papers and 250+ internships a year. Its about page repeats the 300+ figure and adds 7 exits, but gives jobs as 1,000+ jobs and internship opportunities where the homepage says 1,250+ full-time jobs. Treat both as the incubator's own claims.

riidl says it occupies 30,000 sqft today and is building a 1,50,000 sqft business incubator on the Somaiya Vidyavihar campus. It names Pharmeasy, INDRA Water, Square Off and GetSwipe among startups whose early prototypes it helped with, and says its startup Kustard built Zepto's first interface. Startups it has backed include JioVio Healthcare, Stemtech, Induced AI, AITOE — which it says was acquired by Reliance Jio — Watt Technovations and Save Mom.

Who runs it

Gaurang Shetty is CEO and Chief Innovation Catalyst, Bhavna Pandya is Chief Incubation Officer, Amit Yadav is Chief Investment Officer and Pooja Borwankar is Program Manager. The advisory board mixes Somaiya Trust and university office-holders with investors and a serving DST adviser, and riidl separately lists mentors including Prof. Ramesh Raskar and Dr. David Kong of the MIT Media Lab and PharmEasy co-founder Dharmil Sheth.

Events and careers

Maker Mela, which riidl calls Asia's largest maker gathering, is its flagship event; Darwin is its biology conference and research symposium, and Nazariya its design event. All three now sit inside the Somaiya Innovation and Impact Festival run with the Somaiya School of Design. Jobs at riidl and at its incubated startups are advertised on its own careers boards and on an external board it links from the footer.

Locations

The headquarters is room 520 in the Bhaskaracharya Building on the Somaiya Vidyavihar University campus in Mumbai. riidl also runs a co-working space at the K J Somaiya Institute of Management, an AI and machine-learning centre at Somaiya Ayurvihar, and a NIDHI PRAYAS lab at the Somaiya school.