ABIF IIT Kharagpur

Pick the right door

• Incubation is the programme to apply to. It is the one that is open, and it runs round the year, so you can apply when your venture is ready rather than waiting for a window.
• SAMRIDH Cohort II is closed. Its form is not accepting responses and the call's deadline in April 2025 has passed. Do not plan around it unless ABIF announces a new call.
• It is built for agri and rural-development ventures. The stated mandate is agriculture, rural development and allied areas. A venture outside those areas is a poor fit for the incubation programme.

Check eligibility before you start

• Ownership: at least 51% ownership by Indian nationals.
• Age of the entity: if you are registered as an entity, the date of incorporation must not be earlier than 10 years before you apply.
• No double incubation: startups already incubated elsewhere are not eligible until that incubation period ends.
• You do not need to be from IIT Kharagpur. The terms do not restrict the programme to its students or staff.

How the programme runs

• It lasts up to 12 months and is milestone-based, so expect to be judged on progress between stages, not on a single pitch.

Contact

• Questions go to office@abif.iitkgp.ac.in.

ABIF IIT Kharagpur, short for Agri Business Incubation Foundation IIT Kharagpur, is an incubator for agriculture, rural development and allied ventures. It is hosted by the Agricultural and Food Engineering Department of IIT Kharagpur, in Kharagpur, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal, and is funded by NABARD, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development.

What ABIF is

ABIF is a section-8 company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013 on 20 February 2021. It is a separate company from the institute, not a department of it. Its stated mandate is to incubate innovative ideas in agriculture, rural development and allied areas, and to create entrepreneurs from them.

How the incubation programme works

The main programme is the Incubation Program, a NABARD-funded agri-business incubation that runs for up to 12 months. It is delivered in a milestone-based manner, so a venture moves through the programme in stages rather than all at once. Applications are open round the year, so there is no single annual deadline to plan around.

The incubation programme is the standing offer. Acceleration at ABIF has come through a separate cohort, described below.

Who can apply to incubation

The programme is open to founders from outside IIT Kharagpur. Nothing in the eligibility terms limits it to students or staff of the institute. The conditions are about ownership and age of the venture:

Individuals or entities with at least 51% ownership by Indian nationals can apply. If the applicant is an entity, its date of incorporation should not be earlier than 10 years before the date of application. Startups that are already incubated elsewhere are not eligible until their incubation period there ends.

SAMRIDH Cohort II

ABIF also ran an accelerator cohort under SAMRIDH, the Startup Accelerator of MeitY for Product Innovation, Development, and Growth. Cohort II offered a tailor-made acceleration programme of three to six months, and selected startups could receive additional grants. Unlike the incubation programme, it was not limited to agriculture: the programme page names agri-tech and sustainable solutions among its sectors, alongside deep tech and AI, electronics and IoT, healthcare and medtech, blockchain and cybersecurity, supply chain and logistics, manufacturing and fintech. The call poster lists a slightly different set of sectors, so check the current call before relying on either list.

Eligibility for SAMRIDH was stricter on status: a DPIIT-registered, tech-based startup incorporated under the Companies Act 2013, with at least 51% Indian shareholding, a prototype ready for market validation, initial traction and a plan to raise private investment.

This cohort is not currently taking applications. Its application form is closed and the deadline on the call poster was 6 April 2025, although the programme page still carries an apply button. Anyone who finds it open should treat the form, not the page, as the answer.

Scale and track record

All figures in this section are ABIF's own, as shown on its site in 2026. We have not verified them independently.

ABIF reports 140 incubatees enrolled and 42 startups graduated. Its portfolio page lists 140 startups in total, of which 81 are DPIIT recognised. It reports 28 IP registrations, 20 startups that have been externally funded, 1,586 jobs generated and 21,129 farmers impacted.

Contact and location

ABIF is based on the IIT Kharagpur campus, inside the Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, Kharagpur, West Bengal 721302. Its public office inbox is office@abif.iitkgp.ac.in, and the same address is the contact for both the incubation programme and the SAMRIDH cohort. The site also has a recruitment page and a page for tenders.