Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women

Choosing the right route

• The centre is run from inside a university, and its stated focus is campus start-ups and women entrepreneurs. Check that focus fits before you enquire.
• For the centre's co-working space and laboratory facilitation, ask about availability first.

How applications work

• Send an enquiry through the centre's Register page. It asks for your name, class and registration number if you are a student of the institute, email, phone, areas of work and what you want to ask.
• Or call the co-ordinator on 0422-2440241, extension 237.

How selection works

• The pages do not describe a selection process or an intake calendar. Ask the co-ordinator.

What the centre looks for

• The pages do not say what reviewers look for. The stated objectives are idea generation, product development, business plan preparation and capacity building.

The Avinashilingam Innovation and Incubation Centre (AIIC) is the start-up centre of Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, a Deemed to be University in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. The centre's stated aim is to create start-ups from the campus and to empower women through entrepreneurship.

What the centre offers

The centre's facilities page lists co-working space and laboratory facilitation as its physical resources. Its services, as listed on the same page, cover interactive meetings for potential incubatees, a technology readiness process, mentorship, alumni engagement, commercialisation and marketing of products, and business model design. It also runs capacity-building activities, signs MoUs, holds crash courses and counselling sessions, and organises business plan pitching events and networking. The centre's home page adds opportunities to display products at exhibitions, and an "earn while you learn" stream that offers skill building and part-time income opportunities.

Its stated objectives include creating awareness, fostering the entrepreneurial spirit, capacity building, idea generation and product development, infrastructural support, and access to sources of funding. Its Inspire to Aspire lecture series brought founders in to talk to students.

Who can apply

The centre's pages do not state a formal eligibility rule. Its vision names start-ups from the campus, and its mission names aspiring women entrepreneurs. The enquiry form asks for a class and registration number from students of the same institute, so students are one group the centre serves. Anyone else should ask the co-ordinator before enquiring about a place.

How the centre has worked

The centre's activities page lists its past work. In 2019 it signed an MoU with R.BCC Exports Private Ltd for the incubation of start-ups, and it joined other institutions for joint incubation activity. It ran entrepreneurship awareness camps on both campuses in December 2019, and it ran faculty development programmes with the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India under the DST-NIMAT scheme in 2018 and 2019. Its Inspire to Aspire lecture series took place in February 2020. The activities list also records a student business plan that was shortlisted for a second-level pitch in the Business Plan for Tamil Nadu Students Innovators (TNSI) 2020, in February 2021. The most recent dated entry on the page is from February 2021, and the page footer reads March 6, 2024.

Scale

The centre's pages do not give a count of the start-ups it has incubated, and they do not name a list of alumni companies. The institute's home page shows a counter of 31 patents granted. That counter covers the whole institute and carries no date, so it should not be read as a measure of the centre.

Who runs it

The centre is co-ordinated by Dr. J. Arthi. Its introduction describes mentors who work with upcoming start-ups to help them grow into high-potential ventures, and the centre is keen to build an ecosystem of companies founded by its own students and first-generation entrepreneurs. The institute is a Deemed to be University, declared under Section 3 of the UGC Act in June 1988, and it was established as a college in 1957 with 45 women students. The institute's page records re-accreditation by NAAC with an A++ grade, with a CGPA of 3.65 out of 4.

Locations

The institute is at Bharathi Park Road, Coimbatore-641 043, Tamil Nadu. It has two campuses in Coimbatore. The main contact number for the centre is 0422-2440241, extension 237. Enquiries and contact details are gathered on the centre's Register page.

Before you enquire

The site gives no fee, equity or funding terms for the incubation service, so those questions belong with the co-ordinator. Ask what support a start-up gets, whether a place is open to people outside the institute, and whether the intake is currently open.