TIH IIT Bombay

Work out which IIT Bombay organisation you need

TIH, SINE and BETiC are three different bodies on the same campus. TIH funds IoT startups and runs cohorts. SINE is the incubator. BETiC is a medical-device centre of excellence. If you need incubation, space and an incubator affiliation, go to SINE. TIH's fellowship and student grant will both ask you to be incubated somewhere anyway, so getting that affiliation first makes those applications easier, not harder.

Pick the right route in

• A student or research scholar with an IoT idea: the Ayansh Ignition Grant. It is a rolling call, so there is no deadline to miss.
• An existing startup adding a new IoT product line: the Ayansh Spin-off Grant, also rolling.
• An aspiring founder with no company yet, ready to work on it full time: the Entrepreneur in Residence fellowship.
• An agritech or IoT company already deploying with customers: Aarohan, when the next numbered round opens. Read the round's sector list before you write anything — it changes edition to edition.
• An early-stage healthtech startup: watch for the next ATMAN edition.

Know what you are signing up for

Aarohan is not a grant. TIH takes equity or compulsorily convertible preference shares for it, and its terms cap how much of the money can go to promoter salaries. Ayansh and the fellowship are grants, disbursed against milestones. If dilution matters to you at this stage, that difference decides which form you fill.

Get the paperwork ready before you start

Every funded route asks for the same core set, and assembling it late is what makes founders miss a deadline:

• Certificate of incorporation, memorandum and articles of association, and company PAN
• DPIIT recognition certificate, or a signed undertaking that you are eligible for it
• A fully diluted shareholding pattern on company letterhead, showing at least 51 per cent Indian promoter holding
• Last three years' financial statements, if your company has them
• A milestone plan and a budget in the format TIH asks for
• For the student grant: a faculty advisor consent letter and a letter of affiliation or intent from a recognised incubator, or an undertaking to get affiliated
• For the fellowship: a formal business plan or project proposal

How applications and selection work

Applications are only accepted through the form linked from each programme page — an emailed proposal will not be considered. Shortlisted applicants may be called to pitch, in a prescribed presentation format that you submit along with the application, so prepare it as part of the application rather than after it. Only shortlisted applicants are contacted. For Aarohan, an investment committee approves how the money is used against your milestones.

What reviewers are looking for

TIH funds IoT and IoE technology, and it means that literally: the technology has to sit in the core product, service, business model, distribution model or methodology, not as an add-on. For Aarohan 6.0 the bar was a product at technology readiness level 6 or above, already in deployment or commercialisation — evidence of real installations and customers, not a plan. The Ayansh and fellowship routes accept much earlier work, so match the route to where you actually are rather than stretching.

Two things to check before applying

Aarohan 6.0 excluded startups that have taken investment from another innovation hub under the same national mission, though a grant from one is fine — if you have money from another hub, check which it was. And two Aarohan pages exist on the site, one for the 2026 round and an older one; make sure the deadline and sector list you are working from belong to the round that is open.

Questions

Application queries for every startup programme go to entredevelopment@tihiitb.org. The general office inbox is office.tih@tihiitb.org, and partnership enquiries go to connect@tihiitb.org.

TIH Foundation for IoT and IoE, which everyone calls TIH IIT Bombay, is the Technology Innovation Hub at IIT Bombay for the Internet of Things and the Internet of Everything. It is a Section 8 not-for-profit company set up by IIT Bombay under the Department of Science and Technology's National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems. It works from the third floor of the CSRE Building on the IIT Bombay campus at Powai, Mumbai.

TIH funds founders rather than housing them. Its startup work sits under one of four pillars — Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development — alongside Technology and Product Development, HR and Skill Development, and International Collaboration. The sectors it applies IoT to are agriculture, healthcare, industrial IoT, defence and security, smart education and fintech.

Which IIT Bombay body is this

There are three separate organisations at IIT Bombay that a founder might be pointed to, and TIH's own pages draw the lines. TIH is the DST innovation hub: it invests in and gives grants to IoT startups and runs accelerator cohorts. SINE, the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, is IIT Bombay's technology business incubator — the place a startup is actually incubated. BETiC, the Biomedical Engineering and Technology Innovation Centre, is an IIT Bombay centre of excellence for medical devices.

TIH names both of the others in one sentence on its own fellowship page, as places its fellows can get associated with, and it names SINE as the incubation partner for its healthtech accelerator. It does not claim to be either. Two of its programmes go further and require the founder to be incubated somewhere else: the fellowship says the selected entrepreneur must be registered for pre-incubation or incubation with a technology business incubator throughout, and the student grant asks the applicant to be registered with a recognised incubator or to register within a stipulated period. Its growth-stage initiative works through existing incubators rather than directly. So if you want space and a formal incubator affiliation at IIT Bombay, SINE is the door; if you want money and mentoring for an IoT product, TIH is.

How the programmes work

TIH runs three routes a founder can apply to, plus an accelerator that runs in editions.

Aarohan is the seed support programme, and it is the one to read carefully. TIH does not give this one as a grant: it takes equity or compulsorily convertible preference shares in return. Aarohan runs in numbered rounds rather than continuously. The 2026 round, Aarohan 6.0, was open only to agritech startups at the deployment or commercialisation stage, working on IoT and satellite remote sensing for agriculture, aerial multispectral and hyperspectral crop diagnostics, IoT-enabled agricultural supply chain and traceability, or IoT-based quality and safety monitoring across the food value chain. It closed in August 2026. The earlier round, Aarohan 5.0, was broader — any startup with an IoT product, with indigenous sensor development for agriculture and healthcare called out — so the sector gate changes with the round.

Ayansh is the grant route, and it is a rolling call, which makes it the one you can act on at any time. It has two halves: an Ignition Grant for students and research scholars taking an idea to a prototype, and a Spin-off Grant for an existing startup adding a new product line in IoT. Funding runs for up to three years against agreed milestones.

The Entrepreneur in Residence fellowship pays a monthly fellowship grant for up to twelve months to an aspiring founder pursuing an IoT business idea full time. You do not need a company; if one already exists for the idea you must be one of its promoters. The published page describes the 2024 edition and states no current deadline, so check before preparing an application.

ATMAN is the healthtech accelerator. Its third edition ran eight weekly sessions covering customers and market fit, go-to-market, business development, financial planning, legal, intellectual property and compliance, clinical trials and licence approvals, and investor readiness, and ended in a demo day at Novotel Mumbai International Airport in January 2026, with Steerx as investment partner, SINE as incubation partner and ISBA as ecosystem partner. Registrations for that edition are closed.

TIH also lists CPS-PRAYAS for idea-to-prototype support, CPS-DIAL for growth-stage startups and a mentorship programme. The first two publish objectives but no eligibility, dates or way to apply, and the mentorship link in the menu leads to a page that is not there. Treat all three as things to ask about rather than doors you can walk through today.

Who can apply

The common thread across the funded routes is that the company must be recognised by DPIIT or eligible for recognition, must have at least 51 per cent Indian promoter shareholding, and must have IoT technology in the core product, service, business model, distribution model or methodology. Aarohan 6.0 added a technology readiness level of 6 or above and barred startups that have taken investment from another NM-ICPS innovation hub, though a grant from one does not disqualify. The Ignition Grant is for students and research scholars at AICTE or UGC approved institutes. The fellowship is for Indian citizens who have graduated, hold a degree or diploma in engineering or science, are pursuing entrepreneurship full time, and hold no other government fellowship or remuneration.

What support comes with the money

Funded startups get business and technical mentoring from TIH's mentor pool, a place at TIH events and workshops, access to TIH's own facilities, labs and technology resources as per its policies, and a route to a next round of funding. Note the wording on facilities: the promise is access to TIH's resources, not to IIT Bombay's departmental labs.

Scale and funding

TIH's homepage reports 53 startups, 98 projects, 289 fellowships, 83 papers, 712 individuals trained and 60 institutional imprints. These are its own figures and carry no date. Its entrepreneurship page names fifteen portfolio startups, among them Ayu Devices, Living Things, Neoperk, Godaam Innovations, WeatherCast Solutions, Segritech and Borse Automotive, so the fifteen and the 53 are counting different things.

Some DST innovation hubs publish how long their funding runs — IHFC at IIT Delhi says five years, after which it must sustain itself. TIH IIT Bombay publishes no period, no end date and no self-sustainability deadline. What can be said is that it is active: a 2026 call for proposals sits in its banner, Aarohan 6.0 closed in August 2026, the ATMAN demo day was set for January 2026, and its newsletters run through 2026.

Who runs it and where

Dr. Prasad Ramanathan is interim chief executive and chief technology officer, Prof. Chandra Sekher Yerramalli is professor in charge, and Hardik Joshi is chief operating officer. The board is chaired by the Director of IIT Bombay and seats IIT Bombay deputy directors and deans alongside people from Accel India and Microsoft, with DST officials on the hub governing body. The office is at the CSRE Building, IIT Bombay campus, Powai, Mumbai 400076. TIH has a careers page, an events page and quarterly newsletters. Beyond startups it runs IoT skilling: certified courses, an IoT lab certificate programme, managed training centres, and a programme for Scheduled Tribe students.