Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship

Choosing what to apply for

• A short course to help you start up: the Entrepreneurship Development Programme. It is a dated training course on the Guwahati campus, not a place in an incubator.
• Advice as you build: the Mentoring & Handholding Service, which IIE describes as structured and customised mentoring for entrepreneurs at different stages of the business lifecycle. It is open to aspiring entrepreneurs, startups, MSMEs, self-help groups, farmer producer organisations, Van Dhan Vikas Kendras, women, tribal and youth-led enterprises and social enterprises.
• The MSME Idea Hackathon and the rural enterprise programme: these are ministry schemes. IIE's role in them is as technical evaluator and as National Resource Organisation, so there is no application to IIE for either.

How applications work

• There is one enquiry form on the IIE site covering training, internship and mentoring requests. Choose the area you want, including the Entrepreneurship Development Programme or the Mentoring & Handholding Service, submit it, and the team contacts you.
• Training and mentoring enquiries also go to the institute's training inbox, which is listed beside the form.
• Batches are published with dates as they are scheduled, rather than held open for applications year-round. The listing for a batch is what to read for whether it is residential and whether a fee applies.

What to expect

• The Entrepreneurship Development Programme runs for ten days and is listed as residential on the IIE campus in Guwahati. Some batches run in blended mode instead.
• The published age band for that course is 18 to 45, described as flexible as per scheme.
• Fee policy is set batch by batch: some listings show a charge and some show none.

The Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE) is an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, Government of India. It was established in Guwahati in 1993 by the erstwhile Ministry of Industry, now the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, and registered under the Societies Registration Act 1860. Its stated aim is training, research and consultancy in small and micro enterprises, with a special focus on entrepreneurship development.

IIE does not run a startup incubator with an intake a founder joins. It runs short training courses and a mentoring service for entrepreneurs and small enterprises, and it holds implementation roles in central government schemes for rural livelihoods and for MSME innovation.

How programmes work

Its recurring course is the Entrepreneurship Development Programme, a ten-day programme run on the IIE campus at Lalmati in Guwahati. Batch listings give the dates, the address and whether that batch is residential. A recent batch ran in blended mode over ten days in September 2026 and took 25 trainees, with the stated aim of equipping aspiring entrepreneurs with the tools, mentoring and practical knowledge to launch ventures.

Fee policy differs from batch to batch. One batch listing shows a fee and an earlier batch shows none, so the listing for the batch is what to check.

Alongside the courses, IIE offers structured and customised mentoring for entrepreneurs at different stages of the business lifecycle. The service is open well beyond a campus community: the institute's own list of who can benefit covers aspiring entrepreneurs, startups, MSMEs, self-help groups, farmer producer organisations, Van Dhan Vikas Kendras, women entrepreneurs, tribal entrepreneurs, youth-led enterprises and social enterprises.

IIE also implements work under two central schemes. Under the Startup Village Entrepreneurship Programme, a sub-scheme of the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana National Rural Livelihoods Mission of the Ministry of Rural Development, it serves as the National Resource Organisation, developing enterprises with self-help group households in rural India. That work includes training for CRP-EPs, entrepreneurship development programmes and mentorship and handholding.

Under the incubation component of the MSME Innovative Scheme, IIE has served as Host Institute and technical evaluator for the MSME Idea Hackathon 4.0 in the North Eastern Region, screening idea proposals from young innovators and forwarding shortlisted ones to the Ministry of MSME. The initiative is for innovators aged 18 to 35 and works toward market-ready prototypes; innovators selected at the national level can access financial support under the Ministry's scheme. The most recent published round of this work covers the financial year 2025-26.

The Ministry of MSME has also approved IIE as a Mentor Institute under the ASPIRE scheme, which supports Livelihood Business Incubation centres in agro-industry. In that role IIE works between the ministry and the approved host institutes, running awareness programmes, counselling and structured mentorship.

Who can apply

For the Entrepreneurship Development Programme the published age band is 18 to 45, described as flexible as per scheme, and the interest required is in entrepreneurship. Intakes appear as dated batches rather than as a call that stays open. The mentoring service is open to the groups listed above, with no further criteria published.

The two scheme roles are not things to apply for at IIE. The idea hackathon runs through the Ministry of MSME's own route, and the rural enterprise programme is for self-help group households in rural India.

Scale

IIE publishes counts of people trained and supported under its scheme work, not a portfolio of startups. For the year to 31 March 2026 it reports 376 CRP-EPs trained, 2,270 entrepreneurs through entrepreneurship development programmes, and mentorship and handholding for 6,963 entrepreneurs under the rural programme. Under the ASPIRE role it reports 39 scheme awareness programmes covering 210 applicant beneficiaries, 385 counselling and handholding interventions and 411 beneficiaries supported through structured mentorship in the same year. For the idea hackathon in the North Eastern Region it reports 82 proposals received across sectors including sustainable development, frontier technologies and PM Vishwakarma trades, and 22 ideas shortlisted and forwarded to the ministry for national-level evaluation. All of these are the institute's own figures.

Who runs it

IIE is an autonomous organisation registered under the Societies Registration Act 1860, under the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship since 22 May 2015. An older citizen's charter on its site still places the institute under the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, which was its parent until that transfer. Its contact page lists the office of the Director as the general point of contact.

Locations

The headquarters is at Lalmati, Basistha Chariali, on the NH-37 bypass in Guwahati, Assam, and training batches run on that campus. The campus also has a seminar hall that outside organisations can book for events.