Ideation Innovation & Incubation (I-3) Foundation

Before you reach out

• Check the stage. The policy's charge tiers are for early-stage and early-traction start-ups, so come with a product or early users rather than only an idea.
• Expect to be a registered company. The policy asks for the company's registration certificate, tax numbers and shareholding pattern.
• Ask about eligibility first. I3F's pages do not say whether outside founders can join or only people from IIT (BHU). Write to the foundation before you prepare a full application.

How applications work

• There is no published application form, call or deadline. The only route on the website is the contact page and the email address i3f@iitbhu.ac.in.
• The incubator committee approves each company's plan of work, so be ready to present the scope of work and milestones you want funded.

What the terms mean for you

• Paid and equity: incubation is charged monthly by stage, and the incubator generally takes an equity share set by the committee.
• Time: one and a half years, extendable to three.
• Weekly contact and reports: you meet the incubator team every week and send regular progress and utilisation reports.
• Funds: seed loan or grant-in-aid money is released against milestones and must be used as approved. Misuse means refunding it with interest.

Agri start-ups

• R-ABI's ANKURAN and PRASFUTAN programmes target agri and allied ideas. The R-ABI page was last updated in 2021, so confirm that an intake is open before you plan around it.

The Ideation Innovation & Incubation (I-3) Foundation, known as I3F, is the start-up incubation body at the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. It is a Section 8 company and describes itself as an umbrella organisation for building an entrepreneurial ecosystem at the institute and offering "Start to Scale" support to start-ups. It also helps research at the institute move towards commercial ventures.

How I3F works with start-ups

I3F lists its services as technical due diligence, training programmes, mentoring, legal advice, IP creation and protection, funding support and networking support. Its published incubation policy explains the terms for a company that joins. Incubation lasts one and a half years and can be extended to three, depending on the complexity of the project and a review by the incubator committee. The company is expected to meet the incubator team every week and to report progress in writing on a regular schedule.

Incubation can be virtual or physical, and it is paid: the policy sets monthly charges by start-up stage, with separate tiers for early-stage and early-traction start-ups, plus utility and equipment charges decided by the committee. The incubator generally takes an equity share, and the committee decides the exact share and any buy-back option. Seed loan and grant-in-aid funds can be released to the company against milestones that the committee approves. Companies must submit documents such as founder ID proof, the registration certificate, the shareholding pattern, tax numbers, any Startup India or MSME certificates, IP documents and yearly balance sheets.

Who can apply

The policy speaks of incubating a registered company, and it lists a company registration certificate among the required documents. I3F's pages do not say whether the programme is open only to members of IIT (BHU) or also to outside founders, and they do not publish an application form or an intake calendar. The foundation's stated objectives include promoting entrepreneurship among students and society in the region, supporting innovation-based enterprises, encouraging technology transfer and commercialisation, and supporting small businesses in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Units under I3F

The foundation lists four units. NIIC, the NCL-IIT (BHU) Incubation Centre, has been supported by Northern Coalfields Limited through its CSR programme since November 2018. It focuses on agriculture, agri-business, cleantech, food safety and testing, IT and e-commerce, and biotechnology and health, and it runs satellite centres around Singrauli, including a food-tech training centre, a khadi and handloom centre and a drone and rapid prototyping lab.

R-ABI is the RKVY-RAFTAAR Agri-Business Incubator, sanctioned for IIT (BHU) by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare in January 2019. It runs a two-month pre-seed programme called ANKURAN and a two-month seed-stage residency called PRASFUTAN, both with grant-in-aid. The Cisco thingQbator, set up in May 2018 with Cisco Systems and NASSCOM Foundation, is an AI and IoT makerspace that runs hackathons, workshops, webinars and an internship programme for students. E-Cell is the student entrepreneurship cell of IIT (BHU).

Facilities

I3F's facilities page lists office space, computers, printers, internet, a conference hall, a training hall, a prototype and testing area and power backup. It also lists laboratory equipment such as laminar airflow units, incubators, fermenters, a PCR system, gel electrophoresis, a spectrophotometer, a cell sonicator and a polarising microscope. The page says I3F has collaborated with other organisations to provide these, and does not say who owns each item.

Scale

On its home page I3F reports 195 trained start-ups, 63 incubated start-ups and 19 patentable technologies. These counters are undated and self-reported, and "patentable" means technologies that could be patented, not patents granted. In 2025 the foundation hosted a round table with a Joint Secretary of DPIIT, attended by 10 to 15 of its incubated start-ups, and a two-day lab-to-market workshop with the Joint Incubation Centre at IIT (BHU) and the Gopalakrishnan-Deshpande Centre at IIT Madras.

Who runs it

Three IIT (BHU) professors are listed as Directors of I3F: Prof. Rajnesh Tyagi of Mechanical Engineering, Prof. Rajesh Kumar Upadhyay of Chemical Engineering and Prof. Manoj Kumar Meshram of Electronics Engineering. The foundation sits opposite the Proctor Office on the IIT (BHU) campus, Varanasi 221005, and can be reached at i3f@iitbhu.ac.in.

Name and register entry

Some older pages and the incubation policy refer to the Technology Innovation and Incubation Centre, TIIC. The Uttar Pradesh StartinUP register of recognised incubators lists no entry under the name I3F. It does list a Malviya Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (MCIIE) at IIT (BHU) whose contact is I3F's director and I3F's email address. I3F's own site never mentions that name, so this page does not treat them as the same body.