B. S Abdur Rahman Crescent Institute of Science & Technology

Start with the programme that matches what you need

• General incubation at Vandalur if you are an early-stage team looking for mentoring, funding help or market connects. Its mission names students, faculty and alumni of the university, so ask first if you have no link to it.
• iDEX if you are a startup or MSME with a solution suited to a defence challenge. CIIC is a Partner Incubator; the application itself goes to the challenges.
• READY if you are a graduate or final-year student building a deep-tech product.
• The scheme pages on its website are explanations of national and state programmes, not intake routes at CIIC.

How applications work

General intake starts with the startup enquiry form published on the incubator's website, or a note to the incubation team. The form asks for your startup details, your idea, your sector, the support you are looking for — mentoring, funding or market connects — and who referred you. No intake calendar or deadline is published.

For iDEX, apply to the open defence challenges. CIIC can guide you on the process. For the READY Program, there is no published application form; contact the incubator.

Enquiries go to incubation.ciic@crescent.education. There are separate contacts for investment, for outreach in Chennai city and Bengaluru, and for the Madurai centre.

How selection works

Enquiries are reviewed and accepted or rejected by a selection committee. For defence work, selection runs through the iDEX challenges themselves.

What to ask before you apply

• Whether founders outside the university can apply. The website does not say.
• Whether there is a fee, and whether the incubator takes equity. No page states either.
• Which of mentoring, funding or market connects is realistically available at your stage.

Events and alumni

The incubator runs Demo Days; the most recent one it publishes was in October 2024. Its directory lists the startups it has worked with.

Crescent Innovation and Incubation Council (CIIC) is the technology business incubator of B.S. Abdur Rahman Crescent Institute of Science and Technology, a university on GST Road in Vandalur, Chennai. The university has been running since 1984, and CIIC works from its campus near Tambaram. CIIC describes itself as a one-stop shop technology business incubator for startups, working with students, faculty members, industries, investors and society at large.

How programmes work

CIIC's stated mission is to nurture early-stage startups among students, faculty and alumni through academia, industry and government networks. Its main route in is general incubation at the Vandalur campus. Startups say what they need at intake — mentoring, funding help or market connects — and are then reviewed for a place.

The incubator also holds a formal role in national programmes. It states that it has been engaged as a Partner Incubator by Innovation for Defence Excellence (iDEX), the Ministry of Defence's innovation scheme, run by the Defence Innovation Organisation under the Department of Defence Production. In that role it works with startups and MSMEs taking on defence challenges, and development funding is available to teams selected through those challenges.

CIIC is a Co-Innovation Centre under IHFC, the technology innovation hub at IIT Delhi. Through it, the incubator offers the READY Program, a pre-seed incubation initiative for new product development and entrepreneurship in deep tech. READY gives graduates and final-year students incubation support with funding, extra help for branding and marketing, and a monthly stipend.

In 2022 CIIC was selected as the incubation partner for the Fisheries Startup Grand Challenge, winning the bid among other incubators with the highest combined technical and financial score. That challenge, for fisheries and aquaculture startups, has since ended.

The incubator's website also explains several national and state startup funding schemes, including a seed fund run by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, two MeitY schemes, a DST scheme that helps innovators turn ideas into prototypes, and a Tamil Nadu innovation voucher for startups and MSMEs. Those pages describe the schemes themselves. None of them states that CIIC is an approved incubator or accelerator to run them, and no call through them is announced on the site.

Who can apply

The mission names students, faculty and alumni of the university. Its published directory of startups is made up largely of private limited companies, and its pages do not say plainly whether founders from outside the university may apply. That is worth confirming with the team before you build an application around it. The READY Program is aimed at graduates and final-year students. The iDEX route is open to startups and MSMEs.

No programme page publishes a fee policy, an equity policy or an intake calendar.

Facilities

The Vandalur headquarters has lab and launch pad facilities. Beyond this, the site names networks rather than a long list of equipment: academia, industry and government.

Scale

CIIC's own pages do not agree on its totals. Its homepage counts over 200 startups nurtured in the past six years. Its about page also speaks of over 300 successful startups and a longer history of more than seven years, and its startup directory listed 127 companies when last checked. The homepage reports more than 2100 jobs created by its startups, and its mentor page lists over 50 experienced professionals from business and investment backgrounds, alongside academic and industry experts. Startups from the incubator have raised government grants and private investment, though the site's different pages give different totals for how much. Its most recent published Demo Day was held in October 2024.

Who runs it

CIIC is a Section 8 non-profit company. Its pages state that it holds 80G and 12A certificates and is CSR1 eligible. It sits inside B.S. Abdur Rahman Crescent Institute of Science and Technology, which has run since 1984.

Locations

The incubator works from four locations: the Chengalpattu headquarters at Vandalur, a Chennai city office, a Livelihood Business Incubator in Madurai, and Bengaluru. Each has its own contact point.