Business Innovation and Incubation Centre (BIIC), Mahatma Gandhi University

First, check you are in clause 3.1

BIIC's Incubation Policy names three groups who may apply: students on the University's regular graduate and undergraduate courses, research scholars of Mahatma Gandhi University, and grass-root level innovators including farmers. If you are not in one of those three, BIIC is not your route — MGU Innovation Foundation, the separate Section 8 company at the same university, is the one that admits founders from outside.

There is no form online — ask for it

• The policy says the application goes "in prescribed format before the Executive committee of the BIIC", and that format is not published on the website.
• The "Get a Support" links on the site are dead, so do not wait for a call or a deadline. There is no cohort and no intake window.
• Write to the centre inbox at biic@mgu.ac.in, or phone during office hours, and ask for the current application format and who is handling admissions this term.
• If you are already at MGU, your school director sits on the committee that decides. Talk to them early.

Build the project report properly — it is most of the decision

The policy lists exactly what has to accompany the application, so treat it as the checklist:

• What the business is and what you intend to start.
• A profile of your core team and promoters.
• Three-year projections: profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flows.
• What funds you need and how realistic it is that you can raise them.
• What technical and other support you expect from BIIC specifically.

That last point is where students most often write too little. BIIC is a university centre, so name the school, the instrument or the faculty expertise you actually need, rather than asking for general support.

Expect to present, to an academic panel

After the application is filed you are given an opportunity to present the project to the Executive Committee, and the committee makes the final call on admission. Everyone on it is a university officer or a school director, and there is no investor or industry member. So pitch the evidence, not the hype: what you have built or tested, what the research behind it shows, and what you will do in the three years you are asking for.

Know the terms before you say yes

• Incubation runs for three years, and at the end of it you vacate the premises.
• Space is charged monthly, at a lower rate for MGU students than for grass-root innovators, with a minimum of three years.
• You must take a faculty advisor as your technology mentor, and you meet the head of BIIC once in two months for a strategy review.
• BIIC takes no equity, but after incubation you share five per cent of profit with it for the next ten years.
• You need BIIC's prior approval before raising capital from outside, and before any substantial change in your shareholding.
• Financial support is not guaranteed. The policy states plainly that an applicant has no right to claim any fund.

If you are a research scholar

Clause 3.10 protects your studies: the norms for regular PG, MPhil and PhD students stay unchanged if you use the incubator as a student entrepreneur, including the norms for completing your course, the award of the degree and drawing fellowships. Confirm it in writing with your school anyway.

Two practical cautions

• The website is stale — the footer reads 2020 and the events listing stops at 2022 — so check the contact details and the current application format before relying on anything you read there.
• Do not apply to BIIC expecting an MGU Innovation Foundation programme. They are different bodies with different admissions, and only MGUIF publishes an online route open to outsiders.

Business Innovation and Incubation Centre (BIIC) is Mahatma Gandhi University's own incubation centre, on the MGU campus at P.D. Hills, Kottayam, Kerala. It is a centre of the university rather than a separate company, governed by an Executive Committee chaired by the Vice Chancellor, and it was set up in December 2016 with seed capital from the Government of Kerala. Its published Incubation Policy is explicit about who may use it. Clause 3.1 reads: "Following categories of persons can apply for availing the incubation facilities provided by BIIC. (i) Students of the Regular Graduate and undergraduate courses offered by the University (ii) Research Scholars of Mahatma Gandhi University (iii) Grass root level innovators including common people like farmers."

That clause is the most important fact on this page. Two of the three categories require you to be enrolled at Mahatma Gandhi University. The third is a route for an individual grass-root innovator, such as a farmer, and not for an existing company. BIIC publishes no call, no intake window and no online application form, and nothing on its site invites a founder from outside the university to apply.

BIIC or MGU Innovation Foundation — which door is yours

Two different incubation bodies sit at the same university, and mixing them up wastes a term. If you are an MGU student or an MGU research scholar, BIIC is your door. If you are a founder from outside the university, or you want the DST-supported inclusive Technology Business Incubator route, MGU Innovation Foundation is the one to approach instead: it is a separate Section 8 company at Mahatma Gandhi University and its virtual incubation is open to students, faculty or any outsider. BIIC's own team page records the link between the two — its Director sits on MGU Innovation Foundation's board — but they run separate admissions, and an application to one is not an application to the other.

How to apply, and how selection works

There is no form to fill in online. The Incubation Policy says an applicant makes the application "in prescribed format before the Executive committee of the BIIC", and the prescribed format is not published on the site, so the first step is to write to the centre and ask for it. Along with the application you file a detailed project report covering the business you intend to start, the profile of your core team and promoters, three-year projections of profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flows, your funding requirement and how you would raise it, and the technical and other support you expect from BIIC. You are then given a chance to present the project to the Executive Committee, which evaluates the documents and the presentation and makes the final decision. The committee is made up entirely of university officers and school directors — the Vice Chancellor, the Registrar, the Finance Officer, the Director of the IQAC and the directors of the Schools of Biosciences, Pure and Applied Physics, Computer Sciences and Chemical Sciences, with BIIC's own Director. There is no external, industry or investor member on it.

What admission gets you

The policy itemises what a selected applicant receives: office space, computers, printers, an internet connection, and basic electricity and water. BIIC may also facilitate access to the university's infrastructure and laboratories, on Mahatma Gandhi University's own norms — MGU students and PhD scholars use the instrumentation at in-house student rates, while grass-root innovators use it at the rates set for external individuals and industries. Space is charged: MGU students pay a lower monthly rent than grass-root innovators, and in both cases the minimum period is three years. An incubatee must take a faculty advisor as a mentor on technology issues, can draw on professionals, faculty and industry people BIIC has empanelled, and meets the head of BIIC once in two months for a strategy review. Incubation runs for three years, after which the incubatee vacates the premises. BIIC takes no equity; instead, after the incubation period the incubatee shares five per cent of profit with BIIC for the next ten years, into a fund BIIC uses to run the incubator. Financial support exists but is discretionary — the policy says it is decided case by case, depends on funds being available, and that an applicant has no right to claim any of it.

What else BIIC runs

BIIC is the nodal centre at MGU for the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre of Kerala Startup Mission, launched on campus on 1 December 2020, and the nodal centre for the university's implementation of the MHRD National Innovation and Startup Policy. It runs an IP facility that has supported patent filings by MGU faculty and research scholars, and it hosts the Dr. N. Radhakrishnan International Centre for Medical Innovation, set up on 24 May 2023 with the Dr. N. Radhakrishnan Foundation for research on venous diseases. The medical centre is a research centre, not an intake. BIIC also names partnerships with the farmers' producer company KADS-PCL in Thodupuzha, NIFTEM in Haryana and Agro-Biotech Research Centre in Kottayam, and holds a membership of the Confederation of Indian Industry.

What its startups look like

The ventures BIIC publishes are agricultural, biological and materials-science businesses that came out of university research — an organic sprayable nano formulation for short-span crops, a tool for capping fruit and vegetables, herbal healthcare and cosmetics, a green-conference venture started by research scholars, a herbal diabetes formulation, and companies in health and safety products, biodegradable food-packaging coatings, microbial farm formulations and nano detergents. If your idea sits in biosciences, agriculture, food technology, polymers and nanomaterials, or medical research, BIIC's mentors and the university labs behind it are a genuine fit. If it is software or a consumer app, little on its site suggests that is what it supports.

Where it is, and how current the site is

BIIC is on the first floor of the Convergence Academia Complex at Mahatma Gandhi University, P.D. Hills, Kottayam. Before you plan around anything here, know that the website is not being kept up to date: the footer on every page still reads 2020, the events listing stops at 2022, there is no news or announcements section, and the "Get a Support" links in the header and footer lead nowhere. Treat the policy as the reliable document and confirm everything else by phone or email before you act on it.