JNTUH College of Engineering Hyderabad

Work out which door you need

There are three different things on this campus and they are not the same body:

• You want cohort incubation, mentoring and lab access. Apply to JNTUH TBI (JNTUH Innovation Foundation), the live incubator on the same campus, not to the college.
• You have a technology-led idea near commercialisation and want the MSME funding route. That is the college's own door, through its MSME Host Institute status.
• You want entrepreneurship training or a faculty programme. That is the EDC's awareness camps, development programmes and faculty programmes.

Using the MSME Host Institute route

The college is listed as a Host Institute in the Ministry of MSME's register, so you can name it when you apply under the ministry's incubation scheme. It is open to any individual or micro or small enterprise, not only JNTUH students, provided you have an innovative, technology-led idea that could reach the market within roughly a year.

• Expect a two-step selection: a local screening committee at the college shortlists ideas, and the shortlist goes to the MSME Development Commissioner's selection committee in New Delhi for approval and funding.
• The college has historically held an innovators camp at JNTUH around March where applicants pitch to the local committee. Watch the college's entrepreneurship page and JNTUH notifications for the current camp announcement.
• Selected innovators receive grant support to build a prototype; the college does not take equity.

Before you rely on the dates

The programme calendar and cohort lists on the college's page are visibly a few years old, with the most recent dated activity around 2020 to 2022. The Host Institute listing in the ministry register carries no date or status either. So confirm in writing that a current cohort or camp is running before you plan around it.

How to reach the cell

Write to the Entrepreneurship Development Cell at its official college address, edc.jntuh@jntuh.ac.in, and ask for the current MSME-TBI cycle and the next innovators camp date. The cell is on the second floor of the Class Room Complex at the college in Kukatpally.

JNTUH College of Engineering Hyderabad is a constituent engineering college of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad (JNTUH), on the university campus at Kukatpally. The college was founded in 1965 as Nagarjuna Sagar Engineering College by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, and became a constituent college of JNTU when the university was formed on 2 October 1972. For founders, the part that matters is its Entrepreneurship Development Cell (EDC), which the college has run since 2002 with early support from the Department of Science and Technology, and its standing as an approved Host Institute under the Ministry of MSME.

The college is not itself the campus incubator. The live incubator on the same JNTUH campus is JNTUH TBI, run by JNTUH Innovation Foundation, a separate registered company that takes startups from idea to prototype to product and has its own applications open. The college's own entrepreneurship page explains that the proposal for that DST-funded incubator is what led to the Innovation Foundation being set up as a separate body. So if you are looking for cohort incubation, mentoring and lab access, apply to JNTUH TBI. What the college offers in its own right is the EDC's training programmes and the MSME Host Institute door described below.

The MSME Host Institute door

The college appears on the Ministry of MSME's published list of Host Institutes, at entry 376, as "JNTUH College of Engineering Hyderabad", Hyderabad, Telangana, with the EDC office as the listed contact. That listing is what lets an innovator name this college as their Host Institute when applying under the ministry's incubation scheme on the ministry's own portal. Being on the list is a capacity registration rather than proof that a cohort is running right now, and the list carries no approval date or status, so it cannot tell you whether the recognition is currently active. It is, though, a real and nameable route, and it is checkable in the ministry's own register.

Under the scheme the college has operated as MSME-TBI, the door is deliberately open. The college states that anybody, whether an individual or a micro or small enterprise, with an innovative business idea at near-commercialisation stage may apply, with the expectation that the idea can be commercialised within about a year of funding. You do not have to be a JNTUH student. Ideas are screened by a local committee at the college, and shortlisted ideas are sent to the selection committee of the Office of the Development Commissioner, MSME, in New Delhi, which approves funding. The college says an innovators camp is held at JNTUH, historically in March, where applicants present their ideas to the local screening committee. Selected innovators receive grant support to build a prototype and move towards commercialisation, and the college does not take equity.

Who can apply

The EDC's training programmes are for technically qualified graduates and post-graduates from science, engineering, technology and pharmacy backgrounds, and its faculty programmes are for teachers at engineering and polytechnic institutions under JNTUH and, for some editions, from across the country. The MSME funding route is broader and open to any individual or micro or small enterprise with a technology-led idea near commercialisation. Where a venture would use JNTUH labs or faculty time, expect the usual campus permissions to apply.

How the training programmes work

The EDC's regular activity is a set of short programmes rather than a residential cohort. Entrepreneurship Awareness Camps run over about three days and introduce participants to entrepreneurship as a career and to the support available. Entrepreneurship Development Programmes are the longer version, running from two to four weeks, with counselling and follow-up to track participants' progress. Faculty Development Programmes run for about two weeks and train teachers so they can promote entrepreneurship at their own institutions. Many of these have been run under the EDII-DST-NIMAT project. The programme calendar published on the college's page is quiet in recent years, with the most recent dated sessions falling in the 2020 to 2022 period, so treat the training programmes as recurring but between editions, and confirm the current schedule with the EDC before planning around them.

Track record

The figures on the college's entrepreneurship page are self-reported and undated, and the page gives them in more than one form, so they are best read as indicative. It describes the EDC as having run on the order of a hundred on-campus and off-campus programmes over the years, with participant totals in the region of fourteen thousand, and it names a number of innovators who took MSME-supported ideas forward, several of whom went on to register companies. Because the page states these totals inconsistently, no single precise number is published here.

Who runs it

The Entrepreneurship Development Cell is based on the second floor of the Class Room Complex at the college. It is led by a faculty coordinator and supported by a small project team of a project officer, a research associate and a supervisor, together with a panel of external mentors drawn from banks, MSME development agencies and industry who advise on bankable project reports, financing and government schemes.

Location and contact

The college and its EDC are at JNTUH, Kukatpally, Hyderabad 500085, Telangana. General enquiries about the EDC and the MSME route go to the cell's official email, edc.jntuh@jntuh.ac.in.