Electropreneur Park, Bhubaneswar

Apply to a call, not to the centre

EP Bhubaneswar takes startups in through its Open Challenge Program, which runs in seasons rather than staying open. Watch its events and contests page for the next one. Each call announces a start and a closing date, and applications go through SAYUJ, STPI's startup portal, so it is worth creating your account there before a call opens.

Pick the right programme

• If you have an idea or an early prototype, apply for pre-incubation. Finishing it well is the normal route into incubation here.
• If you have a startup that needs workspace, lab time and mentoring to make the product sellable, apply for incubation.
• If you already work from your own premises elsewhere, ask about virtual incubation. You keep access to the rest of the support and book lab time in advance.
• Acceleration is for companies that have already been through incubation at the centre, so it is not an entry point from outside.

What to send

The centre asks for a pitch deck, your company details and your product information. Applications are screened first and shortlisted teams are called in to pitch to the selection committee, so write the application for a first reader who has not met you and keep the demo ready for the pitch.

What the reviewers look for

• Work in electronics system design and manufacturing. The focus areas named are semiconductor design, energy, process control and industrial automation, education, agriculture, healthcare, disaster management and smart city applications.
• A prototype, or something concrete to test. The centre says it looks for early or pre-revenue startups, teams at prototype stage, and founders with breakthrough technology they want to implement.
• For pre-incubation, an idea strong enough to be worth refining, even before a company exists.

Before you commit

The centre does not publish a seat charge or an equity term on its site, and the terms on the Delhi centre's site are that centre's own. Ask what the incubation agreement involves before you sign, and ask which lab instruments are available for your work, since the equipment list is published by STPI rather than on the centre's own pages.

If you are a student or a college

The centre runs hackathons, internships, faculty development and outreach sessions with universities across Odisha, and joins hackathons and summits as jury and mentors. That is a separate track from startup intake, and the way in is through your institution.

Electropreneur Park, Bhubaneswar is a Centre of Entrepreneurship for electronics system design and manufacturing, run by Software Technology Parks of India at the STPI-ELITE Building in Gothapatna, Bhubaneswar. It is often called EP Bhubaneswar or EP-BBSR. It is funded jointly by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Electronics and Information Technology Department of the Government of Odisha, and STPI Bhubaneswar, with the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association as implementing partner and IIIT Bhubaneswar as academic partner.

It is a separate centre from Electropreneur Park Delhi, which is hosted at IIIT Delhi and runs its own calls and its own terms. STPI's directory of Centres of Entrepreneurship lists the two as different centres, and the Delhi centre's programmes, charges and facilities do not apply here. If you are comparing the two, note that this page covers only the Bhubaneswar centre.

How its programmes work

The centre runs four programmes that follow one another as a company grows. Pre-incubation is for innovators with an idea that still needs refining, and for companies at an early stage of prototype development. The aim is to get the idea to a working prototype and then to something sellable, and founders who finish pre-incubation successfully are offered incubation at EP Bhubaneswar.

Incubation is for new startups working to make their product marketable. It comes with workspace, use of the in-house lab, help with funding, mentoring, networking and market connect. Acceleration follows for companies that have finished incubation and have a product that works in the market but needs scale, whether that means more manufacturing capacity or new customers; the support there is focused techno-commercial mentoring and help reaching larger funding.

Virtual incubation is for founders who would qualify for pre-incubation or incubation but do not need a desk, because they already run from somewhere else in the city or the country. They use the rest of what the centre offers, and can book time on the physical facilities, including the labs, by arranging it in advance.

Who can apply and how

Intake is not a rolling form. The centre opens a call, called the Open Challenge Program, and runs a season of it at a time; the eighth season closed in August 2026 and earlier seasons have run since at least 2024. Applications go through SAYUJ, STPI's startup portal, where you submit your pitch deck, company details and product information. Applications are screened first, shortlisted teams are invited to pitch to the selection committee, and the startups picked are then onboarded into the centre.

The centre describes what it is looking for as early or pre-revenue startups, teams at prototype stage or wanting to test a prototype, founders who have built breakthrough technology and want to put it to work, and, for pre-incubation, people with an unusually good idea. Its focus areas are semiconductor design, energy, process control and industrial automation, education, agriculture, healthcare, disaster management and smart city applications, all within electronics system design and manufacturing. The centre publishes no incorporation, turnover or domicile condition of its own, and no seat charge or equity term.

Facilities

The centre occupies about 7,500 square feet, according to STPI. Startups get ready-to-work plug and play space, high-speed internet, a network operations centre, round-the-clock access and security, and a support team on site. There is a conference room and a business discussion room alongside the work area.

STPI describes the ESDM lab as equipped for prototyping and testing across power electronics, LED, communication and RF, listing instruments such as power meters and analysers, programmable loads and DC supplies, spectrometers and lux meters, logic and signal analysers, spectrum analysers, vector network analysers and fibre test kits, along with embedded hardware and software tooling. On the software side the centre names OrCAD PCB Designer for schematic and layout work, LabVIEW for test and measurement, and IAR Embedded Workbench.

Mentoring and what else the centre does

Mentoring is the part the centre writes about most: guidance from industry people and domain specialists on technology, product design, prototypes, business models and market entry, including one-to-one sessions. Its mentor list runs to twenty-one people from the electronics and semiconductor industry, among them senior figures from Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems, Texas Instruments India, the VLSI Society of India and Onward Technologies. Pradeep Gupta of CyberMedia and CMR India is its chief mentor and chairs the project monitoring group, which reviews the centre's work and its startups.

Beyond its own cohorts the centre works across Odisha's colleges. It runs the BPUT Hackathon with Biju Patnaik University of Technology, along with a joint internship programme, and has held outreach sessions at VSSUT Burla, Siksha O Anusandhan, GITAM, NIST, GIET and CV Raman Global University. It hosted a five-day faculty development programme supported by AICTE, runs demo days for its startups, and organised an investors connect on deep tech with the research and entrepreneurship park at IIT Bhubaneswar.

Location and contact

The centre is at the STPI-ELITE Building, first floor, Gothapatna, Bhubaneswar 751003, Odisha. Its main inbox is bbs.ep@stpi.in and its phone number is on its contact page. Openings at the centre are posted on its careers page, most recently for a programme manager, and its events and contests pages carry the current calls.