B M S College of Engineering

Check that this is for you first

BMSCE's innovation and incubation cell is built for the college's own students and faculty. Before you spend time on it, confirm you are eligible:

• BMSCE students and faculty: this is your campus route to prototyping tools, seed money and incubation.
• Outside founders with no BMSCE link: there is no published open-intake route here, so look elsewhere unless you are partnering with a BMSCE team.

Pick the right route in

• Innovator route: for a proposal or a prototype you want to turn into a workable model.
• Incubatee route: for a venture you want to build, where you already have a basic business plan in mind.
• Idea Lab and IIC activities: for earlier-stage work, awareness sessions, idea competitions and the annual Startup Week.

How applications work

• Start with the application form, which a screening committee reviews.
• On approval, submit a basic plan (a workable-model plan for Innovators, a business plan for Incubatees).
• An evaluation committee reviews it, then you prepare a term sheet and a report.
• You present to the BIG Foundation Board, and on a positive assessment you are inducted and sign the contractual documents.

What reviewers look for

• A proposal or prototype that can be shown to work as a feasible model.
• Enough of a plan that the board can assess it before backing it. The BIG Foundation says it funds projects only when they show promise.
• For seed money through the IIC, an idea strong enough to be selected and taken forward with a faculty mentor.

Who to contact

• General college enquiries: info@bmsce.ac.in

B.M.S. College of Engineering (BMSCE) is a private engineering college on Bull Temple Road in Bengaluru, Karnataka, founded in 1946. Its innovation and incubation activity is run in-house for its own students and faculty, through a Centre for Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE), an Institution's Innovation Council (IIC), and a body it calls the BIG Foundation. If you are not a BMSCE student, staff member or a team the college takes on, this is not an open-intake incubator you can walk into.

The BIG Foundation, whose full name is the B.M. Sreenivasaiah Innovators Guild Foundation, is the part of BMSCE that takes people through incubation. It describes itself as supporting start-ups with incubation facilities, consultancy and industry-institute interaction, and it works in partnership with BMSCE to back students with promising ideas. CIIE frames the same goal more broadly: to build an ecosystem that motivates students at every level, from school to PhD, to turn ideas into prototypes.

How programmes work

The BIG Foundation runs two routes, and both start with an application form that a screening committee reviews. The Innovator route is for someone with a proposal or a prototype. Once the screening committee approves it, you submit a basic plan to turn the idea into a workable model, an evaluation committee reviews that, and you then prepare an innovation term sheet and report to present to the BIG Foundation Board. After the board assesses the presentation, contractual documents are drawn up and you are inducted as a BIG Foundation Innovator.

The Incubatee route works the same way for someone who wants to build a venture. After the screening committee approves your application, you submit a basic business plan, and if it is accepted you prepare an incubation term sheet and report to present to the board before being inducted as a BIG Foundation Incubatee. A third, lighter route invites industry experts and professionals to sign up as mentors for the Innovators and Incubatees.

Alongside this, the IIC runs the awareness end of the funnel: startup awareness workshops, idea competitions, field visits and an annual Startup Week built around design thinking, patent filing and pitching, in line with the national Institution's Innovation Council guidelines. Selected ideas can be awarded seed money, which BMSCE supports from a budget set aside for its startup cell, under the startup cell's own byelaws and IP policy.

Who can apply

Everything here is aimed at BMSCE's own community. The BIG Foundation talks about backing "students with innovative ideas" through its partnership with the college; the IIC's activities run through the institute's departments and faculty mentors; and CIIE's Idea Lab is pitched at learners from school to PhD level. There is no stated route for an outside founder with no BMSCE affiliation to apply, and no incorporation or geography rule is published beyond that. A student or faculty member at BMSCE looking for their own campus incubator will find it here; a founder outside the college should read this as a campus body rather than an open programme.

Facilities

CIIE runs an Idea Lab with a set of prototyping and electronics tools: 3D printers, a 3D scanner, a CNC wood router, a CO2 laser cutting machine, a vinyl cutter, a lathe cum milling machine, a PCB milling machine and a reflow oven. The BIG Foundation adds co-working space with high-speed internet and a testing facility through networked labs, and lists IPR and legal support, funding and mentoring among what it offers. The IIC notes that the institute also has five Propel research labs that provide extra tools and resources for building.

Who runs it

CIIE is led by Dr. Savithri Bhat, a professor of biotechnology who is BMSCE's Dean of Innovation and the President of its IIC. The CIIE team is chaired by the Principal, Dr. Bheemsha Arya. The BIG Foundation lists its own promoters and directors, including Dr. B. S. Ragini Narayan, the college's donor trustee and member secretary, the Chairman Dr. P. Dayanand Pai, the trustee Aviram Sharma, the Principal Dr. Bheemsha Arya, and directors Dr. H. N. Suma and Dr. Abhishek M. Appaji. Its advisory panel draws in people from outside the college, among them Dr. A. Vijayarajan of InnAccel Technologies, Dr. Shyam Vasudeva Rao of Forus Health, Col. H. S. Shankar of Alpha Design Technologies, and academics from Texas A&M University and the University of Arkansas.

Locations

BMSCE is at P.O. Box No. 1908, Bull Temple Road, Basavanagudi, Bengaluru 560019, Karnataka. General college enquiries go to info@bmsce.ac.in, and the BIG Foundation is reached through the innovation cell on campus. Note that the separate CIIE and BIG Foundation web addresses the college links to are not currently reachable, so the working source for all of this is the college's own site.