AIC-EMPI

Choosing a phase

• Incubation suits an idea that needs a business model, prototypes or lab work.
• Pre-acceleration suits a founder still testing the idea with customers.
• Acceleration suits a startup that wants to expand, grow its customer base or raise its next round.

How applications work

• Apply through the form on the site and choose 'Want to Join as an Incubatee'.
• The form asks for your profile (student, working professional or entrepreneur), your college, organisation or startup name, your area of interest and your current status: ideation, proof of concept or prototype.
• It also asks what the idea is, what problem it solves, what makes it unique, who the customer is and who the competitors are. Attach a presentation or plan if you have one.

What to check before you apply

• The site does not state fees, equity terms, eligibility rules or intake dates. Ask the centre through the form before you commit.
• The homepage describes no sector boundaries, but the form lists five areas. If your startup falls outside those five, say so in the form.

Selection

• The site does not describe how applications are selected.

AIC-EMPI Incubation Foundation is the incubator and accelerator of EMPI Institutions, a group that runs a business school in New Delhi. Its campus is in the Chattarpur area of south Delhi, next to the Asola wildlife sanctuary. The centre describes three phases: incubation, pre-acceleration and acceleration.

How the programmes work

Incubation takes an idea and helps build it into a business, with mentoring, design and prototyping labs and help writing a business plan. Pre-acceleration refines the idea, tests it with customers and prepares a pitch. Acceleration covers joint development with partners, masterclasses, introductions to investors and market access in new geographies.

The centre describes its model as an ecosystem-format incubation system that works with several stakeholders at once to create high-impact, scalable projects with strong marketable traction. Across the phases it offers in-house mentoring, specialist mentoring from its national and international network, training workshops that address skill gaps, and one-on-one sessions to pitch ideas for fund raising. It also says it connects startups with incubators, experts and venture capital firms in India and abroad.

The site does not say whether any phase charges a fee or takes equity, when intake opens, or how long each phase runs.

The site describes its focus two ways. The homepage says the centre works across new mobility, energy, health, agriculture and edtech with no boundaries. The apply form lists five areas of interest: renewable energy, electric vehicles, smart and clean mobility, IoT and smart agriculture.

Who can apply

The apply form asks whether the applicant is a student, a working professional or an entrepreneur, and asks for the name of the college, organisation or startup. No page states a location rule, a stage limit or any other eligibility condition. Several startups listed on the site are described as DPIIT-recognised or MSME-registered.

Facilities

The campus has a Fab Lab, set up jointly with the Kerala Start-Up Mission as an extension of MIT's Centre for Bits and Atoms. It also has an advanced design and simulation studio set up with ANSYS, a hardware-in-the-loop simulation lab run as a centre of excellence with Typhoon HIL, a bot lab, live labs for field-testing prototypes and test beds.

The co-working space has workstations, high-speed Wi-Fi, meeting rooms and a coffee station. The site describes co-living on the campus, and its about page says a hostel facility is possible if required.

Track record

The site lists startups by name, with a focus area and a short description. It does not publish a count of startups supported, so no total is given here.

The event listings run from 2021 to October 2023, the most recent date on the site. They include sessions on IP protection for startups, a session on one startup's story, and a problem-solving workshop run with a partner institution. One listing says start-ups from its Atal Incubation Centre secured a grant from HDFC Bank in the sixth edition of the HDFC Bank Parivartan SmartUP Grants, for fiscal 2022-2023.

Who runs it

The foundation's patron chairman and chief mentor is N. Vittal, IAS (Retd.), listed as Patron Chairman and Chief Mentor, EMPI. The mentors page lists people from industry, including a head of the mobility innovation hub at Tata Motors in Pune, alongside academics and former public-sector executives. The site uses two names for the parent group, EMPI Business School Group and EMPI Institutions.

Locations

The pages give one location, the campus in Chattarpur, south Delhi. They do not list other centres or branches, and they do not say where most mentors are based.