Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog

Pick the right door first

• You have a working prototype and a DPIIT-recognised startup: ANIC is the direct route to AIM, when a call is open.
• You want incubation space, mentors and seed support: apply to an individual Atal Incubation Centre. AIM does not place founders in centres.
• You are an individual innovator with a grassroots idea: look at the Community Innovator Fellowship hosted at an Atal Community Innovation Centre.
• You run a university, institute, company or accelerator and want to host a centre: you apply to AIM during a call for AICs or ACICs.

How applications work

• ANIC applications go only through the online portal on the AIM website, and only while a call is open. Questions about ANIC go to the programme mailbox, anic-aim@gov.in.
• AIC and ACIC host applications also go through an online portal during a call. AIM's homepage currently says these portals are not open.
• Each Atal Incubation Centre runs its own intake. Find centres in AIM's register and follow the centre's own page for its calls.
• The fellowship has an application link on the AIM community innovation centres page. Cycle dates are not stated there, so confirm that it is open before preparing.

What reviewers look for in ANIC

• A working prototype relevant to one of the listed challenge areas. ANIC supports prototype-stage solutions, not ideas.
• The right kind of entity. The guidelines require an Indian company recognised as a startup by DPIIT, and the majority stake in the applicant must be held in India.
• Fit with the call. Challenge areas change phase by phase, so check that your sector appears in the current phase.

Things to check before you apply

• Read the current call document for how the award is structured. AIM's pages describe it differently, including whether the government takes a small equity stake.
• Plan for a project length of 12 to 24 months, as the May 2026 guidelines state.
• Do not rely on the update date in AIM's page footers, and do not rely on its counters for how many startups or centres exist.
• For general queries, AIM publishes the Mission Director's office mailbox on its contact page.

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is the Government of India's innovation and entrepreneurship initiative under NITI Aayog, set up in 2016. It does not run a single incubator or fund. It supports schools, institutions and companies to set up labs and incubators, and it runs the Atal New India Challenge, a grant challenge that startups can apply to directly when a call is open.

How AIM works

AIM works at several levels. Atal Tinkering Labs are school labs for students in grades 6 to 12 and are not a startup programme. Atal Incubation Centres, or AICs, are incubators set up at universities, research institutes and corporates with grant support from AIM. Atal Community Innovation Centres, or ACICs, are meant for unserved and underserved regions, including Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, aspirational districts, and tribal, hilly and coastal areas. The Atal New India Challenge, or ANIC, is the one route where a startup applies to AIM itself.

AIM also runs Mentor India, which reports more than 6,200 mentors registered, and AIM-iCREST, a remote training programme for the incubators AIM supports. iCREST includes a training track for the startup cohorts of those incubators, but founders reach it only through their incubator.

Because most of AIM's support reaches founders through other organisations, the first question is which door you need. If you want incubation space, mentors and seed support, you apply to an individual AIC, not to AIM. If you have a working prototype that answers one of the national challenge areas, ANIC is the direct route. If you are an individual with a grassroots idea, the fellowship hosted at an ACIC is the closest fit.

Atal New India Challenge

ANIC gives grant-in-aid and support to technology-based solutions at prototype stage, and backs selected startups through to commercialisation. The ANIC 2.0 guidelines, dated May 2026, put a project at 12 to 24 months, with the grant released in three tranches. Older AIM pages describe the same programme as 12 to 18 months.

The challenge areas are set call by call. AIM's ANIC 2.0 timelines page lists them in two phases. The first covers e-mobility, road transportation, space technology and applications, medical devices and equipment, sanitation technology, waste management and agriculture. The second covers agriculture, post and telegraph, drinking water and sanitation, renewable energy and clean-tech, education and open innovation.

Applications are received only through the online portal on the AIM website during a call. We did not find an open ANIC 2.0 call, deadline or portal link on the pages we read, so check the AIM website before planning around a date.

AIM's pages disagree on the shape of the award. The awards page describes part of it as an equity investment held by the government, while the 2.0 guidelines describe the support only as grant-in-aid and we did not find an equity term in them. Read the current call document before assuming either.

Atal Incubation Centres

AIM gives grants-in-aid to institutions that set up and run an AIC, for a period of five years under the November 2023 guidelines. The categories that can apply to AIM include higher educational institutions, R&D institutes, companies, alternative investment funds registered with SEBI and business accelerators. Applicants must have existed for at least three years, and non-government applicants that made a loss in any of the previous three years are not considered.

Startups are admitted by each centre through its own call, so intake dates, sectors and terms differ from one centre to the next. The guidelines let a centre pass seed support to the startups it incubates, with a cap per startup, and mention debt, equity or a mix of both as ways to give it. AIM's register of centres lists them by name, district, state and year of establishment. T-Hub Foundation and JK Lakshmipat University are both named in it, each under 2019, and each runs its own programmes.

AIM's homepage currently says the application portals for Atal Tinkering Labs, Atal Incubation Centres and Atal Community Innovation Centres are not open.

Atal Community Innovation Centres

ACICs are established by publicly funded institutions, privately funded institutions or through a public-private partnership. AIM grants funding to a host institution on the condition that a partner provides equal or greater matching funding, and applications are submitted online during a call. The aim is to bring technology-led innovation to regions that have had little access to it.

AIM also lists a Community Innovator Fellowship hosted at an ACIC. It is a one-year fellowship for aspiring community innovators, open to people aged 18 to 35 with at least a bachelor's degree or diploma in any discipline, whatever their socio-economic background.

Scale

AIM reports these figures itself. They carry no date, and its pages do not always agree, so read them as rough orders of magnitude. The homepage counts 72 Atal Incubation Centres, the AIC page counts 85 AICs and incubators of the established type, and the register of centres on the same site runs to 93 entries across 2017 to 2026. The homepage and overview report more than 3,500 startups supported, while the AIC page reports more than 2,900 startups incubated. Women-led startups are given as more than 1,000 on the homepage and more than 900 on the AIC page. The AIC page also reports more than 32,000 jobs created by startups. The homepage reports 10,000 Atal Tinkering Labs.

For ACICs, the homepage says 14 have been established. The ACIC page says 35 were selected in the first cohort and 14 are operational across 15 states and union territories, and the register of ACICs lists 25.

For ANIC, the overview page says 53 startups were supported with grant-in-aid in the first phase and 88 were shortlisted in the second. The ANIC page's own counters show 30 startups selected and 29 receiving grants. These appear to describe the same programme, and AIM does not reconcile them.

Every page on the AIM site shows an update date of January 2024 in its footer, even where it carries items from 2026, so the footer is not a reliable guide to how current a page is.

Who runs it

AIM is a mission of NITI Aayog, the Government of India's policy body. The AIM website names ministries among its partners, and the Mission Director's office publishes a role mailbox for feedback and queries. No street address or pincode appears on the AIM pages we read.