CU-TBI (Chandigarh University Technology Business Incubator)

Choosing your route

CU-TBI publishes one real intake: incubation at the centre, on the Gharuan campus in Mohali. Its policy also names a Virtual Incubation Programme and a Pre-Incubation Programme as separate admission options, but nothing is published about either, so ask which one your stage fits before you apply.

Before you apply

• Work out which admission category you fall into. Faculty, staff, students and alumni are covered, as are the university's MoU research partners and partner institutes. Everyone else applies as an independent incubatee.
• If you are applying from outside the university, write to the incubator first. The policy's list of conditions leans heavily on intellectual property created inside the university, and its own pages describe the incubator as serving faculty, alumni and students, so confirm that an outside application is welcome before you build a full proposal.
• You can apply before incorporating, but plan to register the company within three months of acceptance. Anything to do with seed money, intellectual property transfer or licensing needs a registered company.
• Be ready for the terms: a monthly fee, equity for the infrastructure and intellectual property the incubator provides, and a facility fee. None of these are optional extras, and they are set out in the incubation policy on the site.

How applications work

The form linked from Registration and Apply Now asks for your name, company details and social links, your team, and then your startup: its stage, whether the entity is a private limited company, an LLP, a proprietorship or unregistered, its sector, whether you sell a product or a service, and a short description of what the company does.

The policy describes the fuller sequence. You submit a pre-application questionnaire, along with details of the founders' involvement in any other firms. The CU-TBI team screens that internally. If it clears, you submit a formal application with a business plan and a description of the intellectual property the company is built on. Where that intellectual property was developed at the university, you also need a letter from the university approving its transfer, licensing or use.

What the business plan needs to cover

The policy lists twelve headings: value proposition, goods and services, market analysis, analysis of competition, financing needs, capital structure, milestones and deadlines, growth and marketing plan, organisational structure, team risk analysis, estimated financials, and anything else you think matters. The incubator says its office can supply an illustrative example, so ask for it.

How selection works

After the team screens your documents, external expert members review the plan for financial and technical feasibility. They may ask you to present it and may come back for more information. The decision is CU-TBI's alone, it is final, and the policy says the incubator is not obliged to explain a rejection.

What reviewers look for

The policy names six criteria: how strong the product concept is technically and creatively, whether it is feasible in the time available and has a market; the intellectual property you already hold and the scope to develop it further; the extent to which university faculty, staff or students are involved; the strength of the core business team; how much money you need and how realistically you can raise more; and your time to break even.

That third criterion is worth reading twice. Involvement of university people is scored, which is a real advantage for a campus team and a real gap for an outside one. If you are applying independently, consider whether a research collaboration or a named faculty mentor would strengthen the application.

After you are in

Incubatees report to CU-TBI quarterly in a set format, may face an annual review by a committee of outside experts, and send in their annual reports within a week of approval. You have to tell the incubator about material changes to the company, and some changes need its prior approval. The policy also lists nine grounds for graduating out, including raising a significant round, finishing the 18-month stay, underperformance, headcount approaching twenty, and passing a stated profit threshold.

CU-TBI, the Chandigarh University Technology Business Incubator, is an incubator on Chandigarh University's Gharuan campus in Mohali, Punjab. It is a society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, hosted by the university rather than run as a university department, and it works out of Block 3A on the campus. The Department of Science and Technology's NIDHI registry lists it as a NIDHI-TBI, with Chandigarh University as the host institute and CU-TBI as the registered entity.

Its own pages describe it as supported by NSTEDB, the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, and as holding seed support under NIDHI. DST's published list of incubators running the NIDHI Seed Support Program, current to 31 July 2025, shows CU-TBI sanctioned in 2020-21. The site also asserts an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Cell alongside the incubator, without naming the scheme behind it.

Who can apply

CU-TBI's own incubation policy is the clearest statement of who gets in. It opens admission to five groups: university faculty and staff; current students and alumni; the university's research and development partners that hold an MoU for collaborative research and consultancy; the university's partner institutes under a collaborative research MoU; and, in its own words, any independent incubatee. That last category is the route for a founder with no connection to Chandigarh University, and the live application form matches it: it asks for your company, team, stage, sector and entity type, and never asks for a roll number, a department or any university affiliation.

The marketing copy across the rest of the site pulls the other way, describing the incubator as an initiative to provide business services among the university's faculty, alumni and students. The policy document and the open application form are the harder evidence, so treat the incubator as reachable from outside while expecting a campus-first culture. The policy also adds a second list of conditions a business entity must fulfil, several of them tied to intellectual property created inside the university, and its wording on whether all of those apply to an independent applicant is not self-consistent. If you are applying from outside, ask before you invest much time in a full application.

You do not need to be incorporated to apply. The policy allows an application on behalf of the promoters and founders of an unregistered company, provided the company is registered within three months of the application being accepted. Seed money, by contrast, is only available to registered companies.

How incubation works

Incubation runs for 18 months to start with, and CU-TBI can extend a company's stay by up to another 18 months at its own discretion. Incubatees pay a monthly fee for the first period and market-rate charges for any extension. CU-TBI takes equity for the infrastructure and the intellectual property it provides, at an indicative range set out in its policy, and separately charges a facility fee at a reduced rate. Its policy names three doors: admission to CU-TBI itself, admission to a Virtual Incubation Programme, and admission to a Pre-Incubation Programme. Neither of the latter two has a page of its own, so nothing is published about how they differ.

An incubatee gets company-specific office space, up to eight computers depending on team size, an internet connection and two telephone lines, with the line rentals and bills paid by the company. Shared facilities include a file server, printing, scanning and copying, teleconferencing, a conference room with projection, a library and a pantry. On top of that the incubator lists mentoring from entrepreneurs, corporate mentors and faculty; investor meets; Mudra loan and grant connects; and support for product and prototype development.

Seed money is structured as a loan rather than a grant. It is subject to funds being available under a scheme, goes only to registered companies, is released against milestones, and admission to the incubator does not by itself entitle a company to it.

Facilities

The campus labs CU-TBI points startups at belong to the university: a scanning electron microscopy lab, an X-ray diffraction lab, an artificial intelligence lab, an additive manufacturing lab, a molecular biology lab, a genetics lab and a chemistry lab. Access runs through the university's University Centre for Research and Development, needs the relevant department's permission, and is charged. Worth knowing before you plan around any of them: the incubator's own equipment is office infrastructure, and the specialist kit is the host university's.

Scale and track record

The incubator states that it has incubated more than 250 startups, and its page on the university research site says 22 startups have graduated. Neither figure carries a date and the site's own copyright line has not been updated since 2021, so read them as self-reported and old. Its startups page names roughly 28 ventures and their founders, without links, dates or sectors, and one entry on that list is unfinished template text.

Who runs it

No chief executive or director of the incubator is named anywhere on the site. Its board of directors is drawn from the university's senior academic leadership, including Pro-Vice Chancellor Dr. R.S Bawa and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Development Dr. Chander Prakash. A four-person incubation team is listed with names only, no titles, and every email address on that page is unrendered.

Events

CU-TBI runs a recurring events programme from the campus and publishes it on its own events page. Recent entries include the North India Incubators and Capital Summit in April 2025, held with T-Hub and pitched across eight states; Campus Tank, announced in July 2025 with Apna and Venture Catalysts; Sandbox in January 2025; and Ignite in October 2024, its flagship startup event, which is aimed at the university's own students and startups. Earlier editions of Effectus, a national startup competition, ran in 2016 and 2017.

How to apply

The Registration and Apply Now buttons on the incubator's site open a six-page incubation form. The policy's formal route then runs through a pre-application questionnaire, which the CU-TBI team reviews internally, followed by a full application with a business plan and details of your intellectual property. General enquiries go to tbi@cumail.in. No intake windows or deadlines are published, so the form is the only entry point and it appears to stay open.