dhaRti Foundation, IIT Dharwad

Check the fit before you write

dhaRti's only documented programme is the dhaRti BioNEST Incubation Centre, and everything it describes is biosciences: drug discovery and development, medical technologies and diagnostics, biotechnology, and healthcare solutions. The wider foundation also lists clean energy, advanced manufacturing and defence, mobility, and food and agriculture as sectors it supports, but it does not describe a programme for them. If your work sits outside biosciences, ask what is available before putting an application together.

There is no form, so the first email is the application

• The apply button on the dhaRti site does not open anything, and no intake window, cohort or deadline is published.
• The real routes in are the contact form, the phone and WhatsApp number on the programmes page, and email.
• Write to the foundation's own addresses, info@iitdharti.org or dharti.office@iitdh.ac.in, rather than the institute-wide IIT Dharwad inbox that the programmes page also lists.
• Because nothing is standardised, send a short note that does the work of a form: what you are building, which of the four focus areas it sits in, what stage you are at, what lab or equipment you need, and what you want from dhaRti.

Say where you are on their own journey

dhaRti describes three stages with go or no-go gates between them: an Innovation Lab stage from idea to prototype and customer discovery, a pre-incubation stage from MVP to business model, and an incubation stage from scaling up to an established company. Place yourself on that ladder explicitly. It is the clearest signal in their published material about how they think, and it tells them which kind of support to offer you.

Be specific about the lab you need

The BioNEST centre publishes its equipment down to make and model, across a molecular biology lab, a proteomics and small molecule lab, a cell culture facility, a microbiology lab, a benchtop innovation lab and a preclinical animal facility. Naming the instruments your work depends on, and roughly how much time you would need on them, makes your request concrete and shows you have read what they actually have. If the equipment you need belongs to IIT Dharwad rather than the incubator, say so — access to the institute runs through dhaRti, but it is a different conversation.

Questions worth asking upfront

dhaRti does not publish a selection process, a programme length, a fee, or whether it takes equity in the startups it incubates. Nor does it say how residency at the centre is allocated. Ask all of these in your first exchange, and get the answer in writing before you commit to moving your work onto the campus.

Who can apply

No eligibility rule is published — nothing about incorporation, state of domicile, or being connected to IIT Dharwad as a student, staff member or alumnus. Outside founders are not told they are excluded. Treat that as an invitation to ask rather than as a guarantee, and mention any constraint of your own early, such as needing to stay registered elsewhere.

dhaRti Foundation, whose full name is the Dharwad Research and Technology Incubator Foundation, is a research and technology incubator on the IIT Dharwad campus at Chikkamalligawad, Dharwad, Karnataka. It was founded in 2022 and is a separate organisation from IIT Dharwad itself, which hosts and supports it. Its one named programme is the dhaRti BioNEST Incubation Centre, a bioincubator backed by BIRAC, the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council.

What dhaRti supports

The foundation names four sector groups. Biosciences innovation covers drug discovery and development, medical technologies, biotechnology and healthcare solutions. NewGen technologies covers additive manufacturing and advanced materials, defence technologies, Industry 4.0, and transportation and mobility. Clean energy and sustainability covers renewable energy, clean water and sanitation, the circular economy, and energy efficiency and smart buildings. Sustainable food and agriculture covers bio-inputs and soil health, nutrition, foodtech and agritech.

In practice the programme that is actually documented sits inside the first of those groups. Everything on the dhaRti BioNEST pages is about drug discovery, medical devices and diagnostics, biotechnology and healthcare. If you work in one of the other three areas, the site tells you dhaRti is interested but does not describe a programme built for you, so ask before you plan around it.

Who can apply

dhaRti publishes no eligibility rule. There is no stated requirement to be incorporated, no geography or category gate, and nothing restricting the incubator to IIT Dharwad students, staff or alumni. The only filter the pages describe is the subject matter: dhaRti BioNEST invites teams working on drug discovery, medical technologies, biotechnology or healthcare. Because nothing is written down, treat the absence of rules as an open door and confirm your own case by email rather than assuming either way.

The dhaRti BioNEST Incubation Centre

dhaRti BioNEST describes itself as an innovation hub at IIT Dharwad backed by BIRAC. Its four focus areas are drug discovery and development, from screening through to trials; medical technologies, covering devices, diagnostics and digital health; biotechnology, from genomics to bio-manufacturing; and healthcare solutions for patient care, health management and disease prevention.

What a startup gets is set out in three groups. Incubation gives lab access, mentoring from people with industry, biotech and healthcare backgrounds, and help with clinical trials, regulatory approvals and product certification. Funding and growth support covers seed funding, introductions to investors and government bodies working in biotech and health, and access to grant and competition routes through BIRAC and other government schemes. Collaborative research covers work with IIT researchers and faculty, plus help protecting intellectual property and planning commercialisation.

dhaRti also publishes the shape of its incubation journey. An Innovation Lab stage runs from idea through prototype or proof of concept to customer discovery. A pre-incubation stage runs from MVP to business model. An incubation stage runs from scaling up to an established company. Each transition is a go or no-go decision, with pivot and iterate loops back into the earlier stages.

Facilities

The BioNEST centre publishes a full equipment list for its labs. The molecular biology lab has a gel documentation system, an ELISA reader, a multimode plate reader, RT-PCR and PCR instruments and an electroporator. The proteomics and small molecule lab has high performance liquid chromatography, liquid chromatography mass spectrometry and gas chromatography mass spectrometry on triple quadrupole instruments, a rotary evaporator, a hot air oven and a chemical fume hood. There is a cell culture facility, a microbiology lab with electrophoresis and refrigerated centrifugation, and an innovation lab of benchtop equipment including balances, shakers, heaters, centrifuges and an ultrasonic bath. A preclinical facility has an individually ventilated caging system for mice.

Separately, dhaRti lists co-working space and prototyping facilities, and the BioNEST pages offer access to research, testing and prototyping equipment belonging to IIT Dharwad. That second set is the institute's, reached through the incubator, rather than dhaRti's own.

Scale

dhaRti names nine startups on its portfolio page: VKF Agri Farm, Mars Meat, ADIS Digital Pashu, Aural Essence, Suvihaan Bionobel Solutions, NeuO, Navya Therapeutics, Bionex Technologies and PAIINNO Tech. BIRAC's own list of BioNEST bioincubators gives a larger number for the same organisation, twenty-one incubatees, alongside ten thousand square feet of incubation space. The two counts are not reconciled anywhere, and neither is dated, so read the portfolio page as the names dhaRti chooses to show rather than as the full total.

Who runs it

The board is chaired by Prof. Venkappayya R. Desai. The dhaRti BioNEST centre is led by Dr. Sudhanshu Shukla as principal investigator with Dr. Swananda Marathe as co-principal investigator. Rakshit Kalyani is chief operating officer, Malathesh L is programme head, Chetan Totad is finance manager and Pavithra M J is administrative assistant. A separate panel of advisors and mentors includes academics from KLE Technological University and SDM College of Medical Sciences and Hospital.

How to apply and where to find them

There is no application form or intake window. The apply button on the dhaRti homepage does not lead anywhere, so the working routes in are email, phone or WhatsApp on the number the programmes page gives, and the enquiry form on the contact page. Write to info@iitdharti.org or dharti.office@iitdh.ac.in; the programmes page also points people at IIT Dharwad's institute-wide inbox, which is worth avoiding in favour of the two dhaRti addresses.

The foundation office is on the third floor of the administration block on the IIT Dharwad campus. The dhaRti BioNEST office is on the ground floor of the Science A2 block on the same campus. dhaRti keeps a careers page, though the openings listed there have been roles at portfolio companies rather than at the foundation, and it runs occasional public sessions, including awareness programmes on the Karnataka Startup Policy and the Karnataka Biotechnology Policy.