Incubation

Incubation is the incubator's main programme. Its own description is brief — it says the programme tackles the problems startups hit and builds a foundation they can keep growing on. What the programme actually consists of is not set out, so read it through the services and facilities the incubator lists rather than through a curriculum. The application carries no deadline and no cohort date, so it reads as open all year.

What you get

• Coworking space on the campus, with conference halls and meeting rooms
• Access to campus laboratories and centres of excellence spanning agritech, food tech, automation and deep tech, including food and water testing, bakery and food processing lines and fruit and pulp processing
• Mentoring from a published panel of fifteen mentors covering business management, investment, agriculture, manufacturing, electronics, machine learning and clean technology
• Help with legal and financial compliance, and with patents and intellectual property
• Technology licensing and assessment
• Introductions to investors, impact investors and corporate social responsibility programmes, and help finding funding and seed support
• Industry partnerships, market access and peer support across the companies it hosts

Who can apply

• Startups at any stage from an idea being validated, through a first working product and growth, to scaling and expansion
• No restriction to the university's own students, staff or alumni; the form asks for your native state and a correspondence address
• Unregistered teams — the form asks whether you would be willing to register during the incubation period
• DPIIT recognition and a GST number are optional, marked to fill in only if you have them
• No geography, domicile, age or category restriction is stated
• Its declared focus is agritech and food tech, though the form's sector list reaches well beyond that

How selection works: not published. Neither the programme page nor the form says what happens after you submit, how you are assessed or how long a decision takes.

How to apply: fill the Incubation Application form on the incubator's site. It asks for your details, qualification and native state, your startup's name and legal status with its incorporation date and identification number if it has one, its stage and focus area, and then the problem you are solving, your value proposition, your unique selling point, your customers, your competitors, how you will scale, your revenue model, your market size and what is novel in what you are building. It asks whether you have filed for any patent or copyright, and you upload a pitch deck before a final declaration. It also asks how much funding you need and whether you want it as a grant or as a convertible instrument. The incubator does not publish its incubation terms, so ask about cost, equity and the length of the term before you commit. For questions first, write to ceo.tbi@cgu-odisha.ac.in.