Indala College of Engineering

Is this the right provider for you

Indala College of Engineering is useful to a founder in exactly one way: it is an approved Host Institute for the Ministry of MSME's innovation scheme. It runs no incubation intake of its own, publishes no cohort and has no startup application form. If you want campus incubation with an open call, look elsewhere; if you are submitting an idea to the MSME Idea Hackathon and want a Host Institute in Thane district or the Kalyan-Mumbai belt, this is a live option.

How applications actually work

• You apply on the Ministry's own innovation portal, not to the college. The college has no form of its own.
• You pick your Host Institute inside the application form. Pick deliberately: once the idea is submitted, the Host Institute cannot be changed, and neither can a switch between the student and general categories.
• The Ministry advises talking to your chosen Host Institute before you submit, to check mentor availability and whether the institute can actually support your kind of build. Do that here — the college publishes nothing about its scheme capacity, so a call is the only way to find out.
• Send the same idea to one Host Institute only. Duplicate or near-duplicate submissions across institutes are disqualified.

What reviewers look for

• An idea aimed at a working prototype, model, proof of concept or product — not a study or a concept paper.
• Fit with one of the scheme's six themes: renewable energy, energy efficiency, automotive technology, Industry 4.0 and 5.0, robotics and automation, or other frontier technologies.
• Novelty and originality, scalability, and a clear case that the idea lowers cost or improves everyday quality of life.
• Anonymity in the technical material. Do not put your phone number, email, brand name, research-paper references or any firm's name in the block diagram or concept note.

Paperwork to have ready

• A government photo identity document for age proof, Aadhaar preferred.
• If you are applying as a student, a student identity card valid for the current financial year, and a willingness to carry the work on after you graduate.
• Name a mentor who is not you — the scheme does not allow the incubatee and the mentor to be the same person.

If you are a student here

The Startup & Innovation Cell is open to students of the college. It is lab access and mentoring rather than an incubation programme, so treat it as a place to build a prototype and enter Sparkathon, the campus idea-pitching competition held at the end of the academic year, rather than as a funding route.

Indala College of Engineering & Polytechnic is an AICTE- and DTE-approved engineering and polytechnic college at Bapsai on the Kalyan-Murbad Road, in Thane district, Maharashtra. It is run by the Kai. Bhaskarrao Mahajan Samajik Sanskrutik Va Shaishnik Sanstha (KBMSSSS) trust, which was formed in 2003, and its degree courses are affiliated to the University of Mumbai while its diploma courses run under MSBTE. For founders, the reason it appears in this directory is narrower than the campus itself: the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises lists Indala College of Engineering as an approved Host Institute under the MSME Innovative Scheme.

Why it is listed here

We checked the Ministry's own live list of Host Institutes on 24 September 2026 and found Indala College of Engineering at entry 325, under Maharashtra, Thane district, at the same Kalyan address the college publishes. That registry entry is the whole of its founder-facing role, and it is worth being blunt about what it is not. The college's own website makes no incubation claim anywhere. It does not describe an incubation centre, it names no cohort, it publishes no application route for outside founders, and it claims no recognition from DPIIT, Startup India, NITI Aayog, AIM or DST. Every "Apply" button on the site is undergraduate admissions. If you are looking for a campus incubator with an open intake, this is not one.

How the Host Institute route works

Under the MSME Idea Hackathon, an applicant does not approach the Host Institute first. You register on the Ministry's own portal, submit your idea, and choose your Host Institute inside the application form itself. Choosing Indala means your idea is evaluated there in the first round and, if it is finally approved, developed at that institute under a mentor the institute appoints. Grant support for approved ideas comes through the Host Institute under the MSME Innovative Scheme incubation component.

Selection runs in four stages. The Host Institute assembles a pool of experts across entrepreneurship, technical, financial and thematic domains, picks a panel of three to five of them for each theme, evaluates the ideas submitted to it and forwards a shortlist back on the portal. The Ministry then screens the documents, and an incomplete or incoherent submission is dropped at that point. Thematic Domain Expert Selection Committees drawn from industry, academia and government score what survives, and a Project Monitoring & Advisory Committee takes the final decision. That last committee can reject an idea without giving a reason.

Who can apply

The sixth edition of the MSME Idea Hackathon was opened to all Indian citizens above 18 years of age, in both an MSME or general category and a student category, across six themes: renewable energy, energy efficiency, automotive technology, Industry 4.0 and 5.0, robotics and automation, and other frontier technologies such as advanced materials, drones, space, defence and dual-use systems, medical devices and electronics. The idea has to be aimed at a working prototype, model, proof of concept or product. A student applicant needs a student identity card valid for the current financial year and has to undertake to keep developing the idea after their course ends. Everyone needs a government photo identity document for age proof. The same idea may go to only one Host Institute, duplicates are disqualified, and the Host Institute cannot be changed once an idea is submitted. The incubatee and the mentor cannot be the same person. The submission window stated in the Ministry's instructions for the sixth edition ran from 27 June to 14 July 2026, so check the Ministry's portal for the current window before planning around it.

The Startup & Innovation Cell

On campus, the college runs a Startup & Innovation Cell, which it describes as open to all students. It is a set of teaching labs rather than an incubation programme. The Drone Lab covers assembly and maintenance of multi-rotor platforms, manual and semi-autonomous flight training, aerial photography and surveying, and introductory autonomous flight programming on open-source flight controllers. The IoT Lab covers embedded prototyping on Arduino, Raspberry Pi and ESP32, sensor integration, and connecting devices to cloud platforms. A Language Lab handles communication, technical writing, presentation and interview preparation. The fourth, the Industry-Integrated Research Facility, is meant to host sponsored projects, faculty consultancy for small businesses and startups, and publication support; the college says its project listings and collaboration details are still to be published.

The campus also runs Sparkathon, an idea-pitching competition for students in their second year and above, held at the end of the academic year. It is organised under Ratan Tata Maharashtra State Skills University, and the college states that incubation support, seed backing and certificates for selected teams come through the MSSU i-Spark Foundation ecosystem rather than from Indala itself.

Who runs it

Mrs. Jayshree Mahajan is the founder and president of the KBMSSSS trust. Dr. Vijay Mahajan is Director of the Indala Educational Campus and Mr. Limesh V. Mahajan is its Chief Executive Officer. Prof. Rajendra Laxman Bharambe is Principal of Indala College of Engineering. The college sits inside Indala Group of Institutions alongside Indala Institute of Pharmacy, Indala Pvt I.T.I and Indala School of Architecture.

Where it is

The campus is at Bapsai, Post Mamnoli, near the HP Gagangiri petrol pump on the Kalyan-Murbad Road in Kalyan taluka, Thane district, Maharashtra. Teaching departments cover Civil, Computer, Electrical, Information Technology, Mechanical, and Artificial Intelligence & Data Science, plus Science & Humanities. Campus facilities listed by the college include departmental laboratories, a library, separate hostels for men and women with round-the-clock security, a sports gymkhana, a grievance cell and student counselling. General enquiries go to the college office; the contact of record on the Ministry's Host Institute list is the director's office.