All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA)

Pick the route that is actually open

iCAINE has no permanent application form, so the question is which national call is running.

• MSME Idea Hackathon is the steadiest way in. You register on the Ministry of MSME's incubation portal, submit your idea, and choose All India Institute of Ayurveda as your host institute. You do not need any prior link to AIIA.
• An Ayush or Ayurveda start-up challenge appears from time to time on the Startup India portal, with AIIA running the intake for the Ministry of Ayush. The last one closed at the end of January 2024.
• In between rounds, write to the incubation centre at icaine-ayurveda@aiia.gov.in and ask what is coming. That is the inbox AIIA itself prints on both of its startup calls.

Check you fit

The MSME hackathon is for people aged 18 to 35, anywhere in India. The Ayurveda challenge took early-stage start-ups and also individuals applying as a team, so you did not need a registered company. Neither call restricted entry to Ayurveda graduates or to AIIA's own scholars.

What does matter is the subject. iCAINE exists for Ayurveda and Ayush knowledge-based ventures. An idea with no traditional-medicine content is a poor fit however good it is.

What reviewers are likely to look for

AIIA publishes its own yardstick, the Ayush Innovation Readiness Framework, and it is the clearest signal available about how the people here think. It scores an innovation on three separate scales: how far the technology has come, whether it can be manufactured at scale, and whether the service around it can be delivered. Read it before you write your application and say plainly where you sit on each.

Two points follow from that framework that are easy to miss. It treats manufacturing seriously because Ayush products depend on seasonal, variable natural inputs, so a sourcing and quality-control answer is expected rather than optional. And it expects regulatory and quality compliance to be planned early rather than left until after a prototype works.

Practical notes

Spell out what you want from AIIA specifically. Its distinctive offer is clinical: a referral hospital, specialty departments and research laboratories that an Ayush venture can test in. An application that could have been sent to any incubator wastes that.

Be realistic about what the centre publishes. It states no desk counts, no charges, no cohort dates and no equity policy. Ask about all of these before you commit, rather than assuming.

All India Institute of Ayurveda, usually written AIIA, is an autonomous institute of the Ministry of Ayush on Mathura Road at Gautam Puri, Sarita Vihar, New Delhi. It was inaugurated on 17 October 2017, on the second Ayurveda Day. Alongside its teaching and hospital work it runs its own incubation centre, the Incubation Centre for Ayurveda Innovation and Entrepreneurship, known as AIIA-iCAINE.

iCAINE was set up under a mandate the Ministry of Ayush gave AIIA, to build a cluster of new ventures and to turn the institute's academic work into businesses. In its own words it administers a business incubator that gives Ayurveda knowledge-based ventures concept-to-market support, and helps convert research into companies. That is a narrow corner of the Indian startup ecosystem and very few incubators sit in it.

How founders get in

There is no standing application form for iCAINE on the AIIA website. Founders reach it through whichever national call is open at the time, and the centre answers questions in between.

The steadiest route is the Ministry of MSME's Idea Hackathon. AIIA-iCAINE is a recognised Host Institute under that ministry's Innovative Scheme, and All India Institute of Ayurveda appears on the ministry's own published list of host institutes. Under the scheme an innovator aged 18 to 35, anywhere in India, submits an idea on the MSME portal and names the host institute they want to work with. Nobody has to be an AIIA student, scholar or employee to name AIIA. Round 4.0 ran in 2024, round 5.0 has since been decided, and round 6.0 closed its submission window with ideas under evaluation. A founder from outside Delhi has already been supported this way.

AIIA has also been the Ministry of Ayush's nominated nodal agency for a national challenge. The Ayurveda Start-up Grand Challenge was launched on the eighth Ayurveda Day in November 2023 and was open to early-stage start-ups and to individuals applying as a team. Applications ran on the Startup India portal and closed at the end of January 2024. Winners were announced across software, hardware and food innovation categories.

Who can apply

Both evidenced routes are open beyond the institute. The MSME hackathon states its rule plainly: ideas are invited from people aged 18 to 35 from all over India. The Ayurveda challenge stated that early-stage start-ups and individuals as a team were eligible. Neither published an incorporation requirement, and neither restricted entry to Ayurveda graduates, though in practice the work has to fit Ayush.

One thing to be clear about: nothing at AIIA is open for applications at the time of writing. The institute publishes a busy stream of notices, and none of the recent ones is an incubation call. If Ayush is your field, the sensible move is to write to the incubation centre and ask when the next round opens.

Facilities and support

iCAINE lists working space, meeting rooms, laboratory access, clinical trials, licensing, mentorship and access to workshops and events. It publishes no desk counts, no floor area and no charges, so treat the space as real but undescribed. The laboratories and the clinical side belong to the institute rather than to the incubator: AIIA runs a 200-bed referral hospital, 25 specialty departments, 12 clinics and eight inter-disciplinary research laboratories, and iCAINE offers its ventures access to them. For an Ayush product that has to be tested on patients, that access is the thing worth coming for.

iCAINE also publishes an Ayush Innovation Readiness Framework, written with the Ministry of Ayush and launched on Ayurveda Day in September 2025. It is a scoring method for how far an Ayush innovation has come, across technology, manufacturing and service readiness, and any founder can use it to self-assess before applying anywhere.

Who runs it

AIIA's director is Prof. (Vd.) Pradeep Kumar Prajapati. iCAINE has its own named staff: a chief executive, two incubation managers and a finance and investment manager. Its stated collaborators are the Enterprise Incubation Centre at IIM Lucknow, the National Commission for Indian System of Medicine, NIESBUD and C-CAMP.

Locations

The institute and the incubation centre are both in New Delhi; iCAINE sits in Room 621 of the academic block. AIIA has a satellite centre in Goa, but nothing published suggests the incubation centre operates from there.