Guru Nanak Startup Hub

Guru Nanak Startup Hub is GNITC’s incubation facility — around 5,600 sq ft with ten cubicles for incubatee companies, tinkering and sandbox lab space, a technology room and training rooms. It is built mainly for the institute’s own students, faculty and staff, and there is no open call or published intake date.

What you get

• A cubicle in the hub, standard furniture, internet and backup power, and a phone line billed to your company.
• Up to two computers at discounted incubatee rental rates; more at market rates.
• Access to the technology development lab and tinkering lab, a meeting and conference room with projection, video conferencing, printing, scanning and the library.
• Other departmental laboratories for product development and testing, with the director’s permission, scheduled around teaching and charged commercially.
• Entrepreneurship training — short-term, six-month or one-year part-time — and regular mentoring across ideation, design thinking, fund raising, financial and cash-flow management, business and product development, costing, marketing, brand building, hiring and business law.
• A licence on institute-owned technology on easy terms, settled as equity, licence fee or royalty, where your startup is built on it.
• Introductions to seed, angel and venture funders where the institute can make them.

Who can apply

• Students, faculty, staff and alumni of GNITC, and staff or students of other institutes, starting a nursery incubation project.
• An existing entrepreneur with a technology startup who wants a research-and-development partnership with the campus.
• The technology or R&D arm of an existing small or medium enterprise, industry association or R&D company that wants a close technical link with the hub.
• The policy adds that the institute could extend the facility to alumni and outsiders. That is permission it has given itself, not an advertised open intake, so an outside founder should ask before assuming.

How selection works: an advisory committee of industry engineers, research-lab scientists, a senior bank manager and the institute’s deans and director oversees the hub, and its members are approved by the board of governors. Applications are judged on the problem and who it affects, evidence you have spoken to real users, market research and existing solutions, team expertise, whether a prototype exists and has been tested, and a costed plan with a break-even view. A mentor’s recommendation letter is asked for.

How to apply: there is no form or portal. The institute’s incubation policy asks for a written application sent by email but publishes no address, so write to the campus and ask who handles incubation; the entrepreneurship development cell publishes edc@gniindia.org. Incubation runs for up to two years with up to two six-month extensions, and everyone admitted signs an incubation agreement that the institute says covers equity holding.