Bennett Hatchery Foundation

Work out first whether you are eligible

The Hatchery's pages contradict each other on who may apply, so settle this before anything else.

• If you study, teach or work at Bennett University: you are squarely inside its stated scope. The Hatchery's own page says it is open to all students, faculty and staff, and most of its published startups are student-led.
• If you have no connection to Bennett: its newer description says early-stage startups and innovators, with no institutional limit, and the state government recognises it as an incubator. But no page confirms an open outside intake, and the only route we can point at is the Bennovate pitch competition. Ask before you build an application around it.

There is no application form

Nothing on the site is an incubation application. The Apply Now buttons and the eligibility and selection criteria links on the Innovation Centre pages are all degree admissions, so do not follow them expecting an incubation form.

• Write to the university's general enquiries address, info@bennett.edu.in, and ask for the Hatchery, or ask the Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship directly.
• The Hatchery publishes the mobile number of its Assistant General Manager as the contact for Bennovate, so that is the person the incubator puts in front of applicants.
• Say up front whether you are a Bennett student, faculty or staff member, or an outside founder. That is the first question they will have.

Use Bennovate as the way in

• Bennovate is the summit that visibly admits outside startups, in a category for national and international startups alongside the school one.
• Incubation support from the Hatchery, virtual or physical, is one of the things the summit offers participants, so the competition is a route into the incubator and not just a stage.
• The fourth edition ran in November 2025 and there is no 2026 edition posted yet. Watch the Bennovate page on the Innovation Centre site, and expect the call to open in the second half of the year on past timing.
• Both a top-twenty-five showcase and the pitch rounds are selective, so prepare a short pitch and be ready to exhibit.

What to have ready

• A clear stage. The Hatchery's programmes are built for ideation, validation and early growth, so an idea or an early product fits and a scaling company probably does not.
• A sector it works in. Its stated focus is IT and IT services, fintech and emerging technologies, healthcare and life sciences, and education, edtech and social impact, and its own announcements add AI, digital media and sustainability. Its portfolio is broader than that, including consumer brands and e-commerce.
• A named mentor need. Its mentors are Bennett faculty with specific fields, so a request that maps onto one of them is easier to place than a general ask for guidance.
• Questions about the terms. Whether incubation is charged, and whether the Hatchery takes equity, are not stated on any of its pages. Ask both before you sign anything.

Bennett Hatchery Foundation is the incubator at Bennett University's Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE), on the university campus at TechZone II, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. It is a registered Section 8 non-profit company rather than a department of the university, and it appears on the Uttar Pradesh government's published list of recognised incubators, with Bennett University named as its host institution. It offers physical and virtual incubation, mentoring, help finding funding, and industry and market links to early-stage startups.

Bennett University itself was established by The Times Group, and its Chancellor, Vineet Jain, is the Times Group's Managing Director. The Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship was set up in collaboration with Babson College, and CIE runs entrepreneurship courses, labs, competitions and simulations for students across the campus. The Hatchery is the part of that set-up that takes startups in.

How the Hatchery works

The Hatchery describes four things it gives a startup. Workshops on the tools and methods of launching and scaling a company. Mentors, split between domain specialists and business enablers. Seed funding for startups that meet its criteria, plus help pursuing angel and venture funding afterwards. And market access, described as local, national and global.

Incubation comes in two shapes, physical and virtual, so a team does not have to sit on campus to be incubated. Alongside them the Hatchery runs pre-incubation programmes, ideation initiatives and innovation challenges for students and early-stage innovators. Its own description of the journey follows CIE's five steps: ideation and team formation, market analysis, solution validation, business viability, then launch and beyond. Its structured programmes are aimed at ideation, validation and early growth, so this is a first-stage incubator rather than a growth-stage one.

Who can apply

This is the thing to check before you spend time on an application, because the Hatchery's own pages do not agree with each other. The newer description on its Innovation Centre page says it offers end-to-end incubation support to early-stage startups and innovators, with no institutional limit. A second block further down the same page says the Hatchery is open to all students, faculty and staff, and that its startups are created by students, faculty and staff from all academic disciplines. Most of its other published material is about student startups: its own announcement of a Startup India Seed Fund Scheme allocation calls it the in-house startup incubator of Bennett University, with a focus on student entrepreneurship.

The clearest external door is Bennovate, its annual entrepreneurship summit. That event's pitch competition runs in two categories, school projects and national and international startups, and the summit lists incubation support from the Hatchery, virtual or physical, among the things participants can come away with. So an outside founder is invited to that competition even where the incubator's own page reads as campus-only.

No incubation application form, open call or deadline is published anywhere on the site, and there is no incubation inbox. Every Apply Now button on the Innovation Centre pages goes to degree admissions. An outside founder has to approach the Hatchery directly.

Bennovate

Bennovate is the summit CIE and the Hatchery run each year, first held in 2022. The fourth edition ran on 14 and 15 November 2025, supported by Startup India (DPIIT), StartinUP and WASME, the World Association of Small and Medium Enterprises. Over two days it held the pitch competition in a school and a senior edition, a startup expo with twenty stalls, a showcase for a selected top twenty-five startups, founder journey sessions, expert talks and panels, an investor interaction and elevator pitch, a reverse-pitching session on what investors look for, a session on women who run startups in emerging sectors, and a cultural night. Speakers at the 2025 edition included Dr. Abhay Jere of AICTE, Nakul Kumar of Cashify, Ashish Kashyap of INDMoney, Vaibhav Jain of Google for Startups, Parimal Raj of PayU and Ritesh Agarwal of OYO, with Amit Singhal of Fluid Ventures among the judges. Winners take cash and other prizes; participants get certificates and partner benefits from AWS, Notion and others.

There is no 2026 edition on the site yet, and the 2025 page no longer carries a registration link, so treat it as between editions and watch that page.

Recognitions

The Hatchery states on its own page that it is a DPIIT-recognised incubator, supported under StartinUP by the Government of Uttar Pradesh, and a registered Section 8 non-profit organisation. The StartinUP half we could confirm directly: Bennett Hatchery Foundation is listed on the Uttar Pradesh government's own recognised-incubators page, with an approval date of 24 April 2018 and just over ten thousand square feet of incubation space recorded against it. The DPIIT half is the Hatchery's own claim and we could not check it against a public register, though the Hatchery separately reports receiving an allocation under the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, which only approved incubators receive. Bennett University is also on the Ministry of MSME's published list of host institutes for the incubation part of the MSME Innovative Scheme, which lets an innovator name it as their host institute on the ministry's own portal.

Mentors and track record

The mentor panel is Bennett University faculty, listed as technical and business mentors. The technical side covers AI and machine learning, electronics and communication, IoT and sensors, robotics and automation, image processing, remote sensing, solar-thermal technology, biomaterials and biosensors, and DNA technology and immunodiagnostics. The business side covers company and IP law, healthcare financing and insurance, social entrepreneurship, marketing and communication, and sustainability. Around twenty-five mentors are named.

Its Startup Portfolio page names thirty startups across clean tech, fintech, edtech, e-commerce, FMCG, personal care and media, among them InstaDapp, Savart, Terrasols Solutions, Travelsey, ChildrenWhoCode, DoubtConnect, VaayuSense and Qadira Hygiene. How many startups it has incubated in total is unclear, because its own pages give four different numbers and the state government's list gives a fifth. Its counters also report jobs created by its startups and the size of its mentor pool.

Who runs it and where

Manish Mathur is Assistant General Manager for the Hatchery, and is named as Head of Incubation and authorised representative on the state government's list. Shubham Awasthi is Program Manager and the university's startup coordinator. Dr. Vinod Shastri, Dr. Ajeeta Srivastava and Harshit Agarwal are the rest of the named CIE team. SPARK, the student-run Entrepreneurship Cell, sits alongside them and runs idea competitions, founder sessions, startup visits and the Karobaar Karnival for students on campus.

The address is Plot Nos 8-11, A Block, third floor, TechZone 2, Greater Noida 201310, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh. Bennett University lists its open roles on its own careers page.