AIC-BV Foundation

Start by picking the right door

• Incubation and Acceleration is the standing route into the centre, listed among the ways to apply on its site.
• A call for proposals, when one runs, takes registered partnership firms, private limited companies, limited liability partnerships and individuals with an innovative idea. The 2021 round is the only one the site documents.
• The investor meeting request is for teams ready to share a business plan with the foundation's investor desk.

How applications work

• The standing incubation page publishes no duration, fee, equity or cohort calendar, so confirm the terms with the foundation before you plan around it.
• When a call is closed, its page says applications are not being accepted and asks visitors to watch the site regularly for updates.

What the 2021 call looked for

• Unique value proposition
• Social impact
• Sustainability and scalability
• Technology advantage

What to have ready

• A business plan and registration proof, which the investor meeting request asks for.
• For a call for proposals, the 2021 round asked for an application and a pitch deck.

AIC-BV Foundation runs the Atal Incubation Centre on the campus of Bihar Vidyapith at Sadaquat Ashram in Patna. It is a Section 8 company, established with support from Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, as a special purpose vehicle. The incubator is a separate body from the society that hosts it: Bihar Vidyapith is a Gandhian educational organisation, and the centre works from its campus.

How programmes work

The foundation lists Incubation and Acceleration as a standing way to apply. That page carries no published duration, fee, equity or cohort terms. Its site also lists a pitch event called Startup Darbar, a request route into an investor meeting, and it says it conducts workshops and seminars through the year.

The one programme with published detail is a dated call for proposals, AICBVF Sankarshan, held in 2021. It was built for early startups: a shortlist of one hundred startups was announced on 29 September 2021, and twenty winners on 15 October 2021. The call page says applications are not being accepted and asks visitors to watch the site regularly for updates.

Who can apply

The 2021 call was open to a registered partnership firm, a private limited company, a limited liability partnership, or a person with an innovative idea. It listed agriculture, education, healthcare, skilling, smart infrastructure and miscellaneous as its fields. Elsewhere the foundation says it welcomes ideas from all sectors. The standing incubation programme publishes no eligibility of its own.

Facilities

The facilities page describes large co-working spaces and a conference room with seating for more than twenty-five people. Co-working is charged, and the foundation says it has kept the price low so that startups can afford it.

Scale

The figures on the foundation's homepage are its own, and the page does not date them. By those figures it has worked with more than one hundred and twelve startups, more than fifty-four mentors, more than thirty-six partners and more than three thousand five hundred jobs created. It also counts more than twenty women entrepreneurs, more than fourteen items of intellectual property and one US patent. The partners page names a shorter list of organisations than the figure above. A separate listing, unconfirmed at source, reports a lower count of forty-four startups incubated; the two numbers do not agree, so read the startup count as the foundation's own claim.

Who runs it

AIC-BV Foundation is registered as a Section 8 company. Its homepage and its about page give different Companies Act years for that registration, 1956 in one place and 2013 in the other. Its team page lists Shri Vijoy Prakash, IAS (Retired), as Chairman, describing him as Chairman of Bihar Vidyapith and Chairman-cum-CEO of the Atal Incubation Centre, and names Shri Pramod K Karn as CEO of AICBV Foundation. Both titles appear on the same page.

The host society

Bihar Vidyapeeth, the society that hosts the incubator, traces itself to 6 February 1921 at Sadaquat Ashram. It was registered in 1928 as a voluntary organisation under the Societies Registration Act and functioned as one, later concentrating on charkha and rural industries. Its history page records Mahatma Gandhi's intention that the institution function as a university, which could affiliate other institutions, conduct examinations and offer degrees, while the same page describes it registering as a voluntary organisation. The incubator's site lists no degree programme. Its management is a Prabandh Samiti. Gandhi's appeal that year raised funds for it in Jharia and neighbouring areas of Bihar.

Locations

The centre works from R-Hub, Bihar Vidyapith, Sadaquat Ashram, Kurji, Patna, in Bihar. The pincode is 800010.