BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

Which route fits you

• Incubation is the on-campus route for a technology startup that wants lab or office space at BITS Pilani Hyderabad. It is the only one that comes with premises.
• Pre-Incubation is for student teams still turning an idea into a venture.
• Virtual Incubation is for an early-stage team that wants mentorship and network access without moving to Hyderabad. Ask about it directly if you are outside Telangana.
• TBI-SERP is a different thing entirely: a Telangana rural enterprise programme for women-led self-help group businesses, run with T-Hub and WE Hub. If you are a technology startup, this is not your door.

How applications actually work

The incubator's programme page carries Apply buttons, but they are not connected to a form. Do not wait on them. Write to the TBI inbox or use the enquiry form on the contact page, say which programme you mean, and expect a reply within about a working day. Phone contact and weekday visiting hours are published if you want to walk in.

Students have a clearer path: SEEP, the Student Entrepreneurs Encouragement Program, runs as an annual campus competition with a prequalifier and a finale, and finalists have been given a six-month pre-incubation place. Watch the activities page around September, which is when the last two editions ran.

What to have ready

No eligibility rule is published for any of the three core programmes, so cover the basics in your first email rather than assuming: whether you are incorporated, who the founders are, whether anyone is connected to BITS, and where you are based. Say plainly whether you need lab bench space, prototyping equipment or just mentorship, because the incubator's own facilities are strongest on the biotech and pharma side and its prototyping space is shared.

What they seem to look for

The incubator names six thrust areas — biotech and pharmacy, ICT for healthcare, MEMS, spacetech and defence, edutainment and e-commerce, and agri-biotech and agri-tech — and the companies on its portfolio page sit inside them. Frame your pitch against one of those, and name the specific campus facility your work needs: the clean room, the central animal facility, the analytical lab or the Sharanga computing cluster. Access to those host-campus resources is a large part of what this incubator offers, and a request that shows you know which one you need reads better than a generic one.

Ask about terms before you commit

The site states nothing about fees, equity or the length of an incubation term. Get all three in writing before you sign anything.

BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus TBI Society, written on its own site as TBI-BPHC, is the technology business incubator on the BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus at Jawahar Nagar, Kapra Mandal, in the Medchal district of Telangana. It was launched in 2012 with support from the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, and now runs on BITS Pilani's own intramural funding. It is one of three incubators BITS Pilani operates across its campuses, alongside TBI-PIEDS at Pilani and BGIIES at the K K Birla Goa campus, and it is a separate organisation from BITS BioCyTiH Foundation.

What they support

The incubator names six thrust areas: biotech and pharmacy, ICT for healthcare, micro electro mechanical systems, spacetech and defence, edutainment and e-commerce, and agri-biotech and agri-tech. Its own pages are not consistent about how broad that is. Every page's footer calls the organisation a bio-incubator, and the infrastructure page says the facilities are built for biotech, pharma and biopharma startups. The homepage and about page describe it more broadly across all six areas, and the portfolio does span space launch hardware, drone test infrastructure and battery cooling as well as pharma and diagnostics. The strongest facilities on site are clearly the bio ones, so a founder outside the life sciences should ask before applying.

None of the programme descriptions state an eligibility rule, so whether outside founders can apply, whether the company must be incorporated, and whether any BITS affiliation is required are all unanswered on the site. Anyone who is not a BITS Hyderabad student should ask before assuming either way.

Programmes

Three standing programmes are listed. Incubation is the main one, for startups and entrepreneurs working on technology, and it is the route that comes with a place on the campus premises. Pre-Incubation is for student startups and exists to take an idea to the point where it is a venture. Virtual Incubation gives early-stage teams remote access to resources, mentorship and networking without being on campus.

Alongside these, the incubator runs SEEP, the Student Entrepreneurs Encouragement Program, which reached its third edition in 2025. SEEP puts student teams through a prequalifier judged by an outside panel and then a grand finale pitch; the 2025 prequalifier was held on 10 September and shortlisted thirty applications. In the 2024 edition the finale winners took a place in a six-month pre-incubation programme with funding and mentorship, and that edition included an Ignite Bootcamp supported by the Wadhwani Foundation. SEEP is a campus event rather than a rolling intake, so there is no open call between editions.

The incubator is also one of three implementing partners, with T-Hub and WE Hub, on the SERP Telangana incubator programme. That programme belongs to the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty and runs under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission with support from the Ministry of Rural Development. It is for rural women entrepreneurs in Telangana, self-help group members and federations, and micro and small enterprises led by women's self-help groups, working in food processing, handicrafts and handlooms, services, manufacturing, and rural innovation and technology. It is the only programme on the site with an application form open at the time of writing, and the page is published in both English and Telugu.

Facilities

The incubator's own space includes a biotech and pharma lab of about 2,400 square feet, with chemical hoods, a cell culture facility, a bacteriological lab, a refrigeration room, a media room, a wash and autoclave area, and four dedicated research labs. A shared prototyping space of about 3,000 square feet holds SLA and 3D printers, a 33W laser engraving machine, digital microscopes and 2D scanners. Office space runs to twelve private offices and thirty-four flexible coworking hot-desks.

Beyond that, incubated startups get access to facilities belonging to the campus rather than to the incubator: a clean room of about 581 square feet for micro and nano semiconductor device fabrication, most of it at ISO 6 and the rest at ISO 5; a central animal facility approved by the Committee for Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals, used for ocular studies, pre-clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacological screening; the Central Analytical Laboratory; and Sharanga, the campus high-performance computing cluster.

Mentoring runs from ideation to commercialisation and covers fund-raising help, from putting a pitch deck together to introductions to venture investors. Sixteen mentors are named on the stakeholders page, with no roles or affiliations given.

Track record

The numbers the site gives do not line up, so they are worth reading with care. The homepage says the incubator has supported more than seventy startups and more than thirty student pre-startups since it began, and that it currently houses twenty-one startups and twelve student innovation ideas. The homepage counters put current startups at twenty-five and student pre-startups at twelve. The portfolio page says it currently incubates thirteen startups on its premises, and then lists around two dozen companies without separating current from past. A counter also claims five incubation programmes where the programmes page lists three. Take the direction rather than the figure: this is a small campus incubator with a few dozen companies through it over a decade.

Named companies on the portfolio page include Abyom Spacetech And Defence, on reusable space launch infrastructure; Applied Aero Labs, building wind tunnels for drone development; Cleome Innovations and Sensome Innovations in microfluidics; Alfaleus Technology, doing virtual-reality eye testing for glaucoma; Pharmajen Laboratories and Cinnova Bio Therapeutics in pharma; and Zeromatter Tech on actively cooled battery systems.

Who runs it

The BITS Pilani Vice-Chancellor, Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao, chairs the BITS incubators. Prof. D. Sriram, Director of the Hyderabad campus, is President of the incubator. Mr. Sachin Arya is Chief Executive Officer for the BITS incubators, and Mr. Mir Ali is Assistant Manager on the Hyderabad campus. The board of governors is Prof. D. Sriram, Prof. G Sundar, CA Sunitha Suresh, Prof. Sankar Ganesh and Prof. Parikshit Sahatiya, with a separate entrepreneurship committee of eight academics and outside members.

Events

The incubator runs competitions, talks, bootcamps and sessions through the year for students, faculty and PhD researchers, including events on Entrepreneurship Day and National Startup Day. Past editions of SEEP, the Ignite Bootcamp and a Pitch Perfect pitching competition are written up on its activities pages. No careers page exists on the site.

How to apply

There is no published application form for Incubation, Pre-Incubation or Virtual Incubation. The Apply buttons on the programmes page are not wired to anything, so clicking them does nothing. In practice the route in is the contact form on the incubator's contact page, or an email to tbi@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in, which the page says is answered within one working day. The office is open to visitors Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 4 PM. Students should watch for the next SEEP edition, since that is the documented path into pre-incubation. The SERP Telangana programme is the one exception, with its own online registration linked from the TBI-SERP page.