Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education

Who this page is for

KTBI is a campus incubator. The university's start-up policy is headed "Faculty members and students of KARE" and is drafted in line with MHRD's National Innovation and Start-up Policy 2019 for Students and Faculty. If you study or teach at Kalasalingam, this is your incubator. If you do not, nothing on the site tells you how to apply, on what criteria or by when — so treat it as closed and look elsewhere.

What the policy actually asks of you

• A project proposal. The policy says KARE provides incubation support, financial and non-financial, "based on the merit of the project proposal". That proposal is the thing to prepare — there is no form and no closing date to work back from.
• A plan for your academic load. A faculty member may take sabbatical leave for a semester or a year to work full time in the business, or pool the days allowed for consultancy. The policy expects you to keep company work and academic duties clearly apart, and says the same applies to students and employees involved.
• Clarity on which work is whose. The policy asks a faculty founder to distinguish ongoing institutional research from work being done at the company, and to get permission before assigning trainees, fellows or students to a project that benefits the company.

Know the terms before you start

• KARE or its incubation unit may take a minority stake in the company in return for space, labs, library, mentorship, seed funding, accountancy, and legal and patent support. There is a separate, lower cap where a founder draws a KARE salary.
• You keep rights over the technology your company develops, but if KARE funds or facilities were used substantially the rights are held jointly with the inventor and licensed together, with revenue shared.
• A faculty member can run a project through their own company inside KARE by paying overhead charges.
• Conflicts go to a five-member committee appointed by the Vice-Chancellor, and its decision is final.

Who to talk to on campus

There is no applications inbox. The published role contacts are the TBI Manager, who is also President of the Institution's Innovation Council, at directoriedc@klu.ac.in, and the NISP coordinator at the business school, hodmba@klu.ac.in. For prototyping rather than incubation, the KARE AICTE IDEA LAB publishes aicteidealab@klu.ac.in and its own phone numbers, and it is the one facility with stated access — it runs around the clock and invites all campus stakeholders to use it. Expect to start these conversations yourself; none of these inboxes is advertised as a way to apply.

Which programme is which

• Entrepreneurship Awareness Camp — an introduction for engineering and science students and faculty deciding whether to go this way at all.
• Entrepreneurship Development Programme — for science and technology graduates and diploma holders, on planning and launching a business.
• Technology-Based Entrepreneurship Development Programme — for founders working in one technology area, with hands-on work on technologies developed by research institutions and available to commercialise.
• Faculty Development Programme — a two-week programme for 15 to 20 faculty members, including faculty from other colleges, polytechnics and entrepreneurship organisations. It trains you to mentor students, not to found a company.

None of the four publishes dates or a way to register, so ask the TBI Manager when the next one runs.

What to check before you rely on any of this

• The activity plan the university publishes as its current plan runs from September 2021 to August 2022, and the event gallery's latest dated item is from 2020. Ask what is actually running this term.
• The three download links on the startup page — the expert team, the implementation committee and the completed projects — do not open anything.
• The counts on the page do not agree: it gives 15 student companies on campus, 10 in the last three years, and a list of 17 names. Do not quote any of them without asking which is current.
• Nothing on the site states how long incubation lasts, whether space is charged for, or what the selection committee looks at. Get those answers in writing before you sign anything that gives up a stake.

Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education (KARE) is a deemed university at Krishnankoil, in Virudhunagar district, Tamil Nadu. Inside it sits the Kalasalingam Technology Business Incubator (KTBI), set up in 2015 out of an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre started with the support of the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board of the Department of Science and Technology. KTBI works with ventures started by the university's own students and faculty. It publishes no application route, eligibility page, intake window or deadline for anyone else.

Who can apply

The gate is written into the university's own start-up policy, which is headed "KARE Startup Policy (Drafted in line with MHRD's National Innovation and Start-up Policy 2019 for Students and Faculty)" and opens with the sentence "Faculty members and students of KARE are occupied in knowledge discovery and dissemination." Everything the policy sets out is written for someone already on the campus roll: sabbatical leave for a faculty member running a company full time, permission to assign trainees, fellows and students to a project that benefits it, and use of laboratories and library by "the founding KARE member".

Two sentences point outward, and neither is an intake. The mentors section says the internal and external mentors give "mentorship to the internal startup and external startups". The financial support section says the Ministry of MSME "gives support to the start-ups, SMEs, and students team" for product commercialisation. Both suggest KTBI has worked with firms from beyond the campus, and eight companies on its incubated list are trading-style firms with no student founder named against them. But no page says who from outside may apply, on what criteria, by when, or through what. If you have no Kalasalingam connection, there is nothing here to apply to.

How a student or faculty member gets in

The policy states the test: KARE "raises fund for start-up support and provides incubation support both financial and non-financial basis based on the merit of the project proposal". The route is an internal proposal judged on merit, not a call with a closing date. The published campus contacts are the TBI Manager, who is also President of the Institution's Innovation Council, and the NISP coordinator in the business school. The KARE AICTE IDEA LAB publishes its own inbox and phone numbers and is the one facility with stated access: it runs around the clock and "All stakeholders are encouraged to utilize this space".

What KTBI offers

KTBI lists shared working office space with workstations, access to university department and research labs and their equipment, the International Research Centre, and a fab lab for testing concepts and product builds. Beyond space it lists mentoring from internal and external mentors, help negotiating with suppliers for materials needed during idea development, internal funding for ideas the mentor panel assesses and recommends, networking for expansion, and help obtaining bank loans beyond the government grants. The start-up policy adds accountancy, legal and patent support. The mentor panel's stated areas are biotech and biomedical, renewable energy, waste management, mechanical and automation, information and communication technology, and agriculture.

The KARE AICTE IDEA LAB, named the Innovation and Prototyping Lab, is funded under AICTE's national IDEA Lab scheme and holds 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC machines and other design and fabrication tools. It is the university's lab, not KTBI's.

Programmes and training

The four named programmes are training, not incubation cohorts. The Entrepreneurship Awareness Camp is for faculty and students of engineering and science courses. The Entrepreneurship Development Programme trains science and technology graduates and diploma holders. The Technology-Based Entrepreneurship Development Programme trains entrepreneurs in one technology area, with hands-on work on indigenous technologies from research institutions. The Faculty Development Programme takes 15 to 20 faculty from science and engineering colleges, polytechnics and entrepreneurship development organisations for two weeks, and is the only one written for people at other institutions. None publishes dates, a fee or a way to register.

KTBI also says it runs an Aspiring and Alumni Entrepreneurs Meet, hackathons, boot camps and ideathons, and marks Innovation Day, Start-up Rendezvous and World Entrepreneurs Day. The activity plan published as current runs from September 2021 to August 2022, and the event gallery's latest dated item is from 2020.

Equity and intellectual property

KARE or its incubation unit may take a minority stake in an incubated company in return for space, laboratories, library, mentorship, seed funding, accountancy, and legal and patent support, with a lower cap where a founder draws a KARE salary. The policy says KARE does not interfere with rights over technology the company develops, but that where KARE funds or resources were used substantially the rights are held jointly and licensed together, with revenue shared. A conflict of interest goes to a committee appointed by the Vice-Chancellor.

Track record

KTBI names 17 companies on its incubated list, four with student founders and products set out in a table: a solar inverter, a keratinase enzyme, a bipolar electrosurgical generator, and biocontrol products for onions and cardamom. The same page gives three different counts — 15 student companies that have functioned on campus, 10 technology-based student startups in the last three years, and the list of 17 — none dated, so no single number is published here. A separate figure of 150 alumni entrepreneurs is the university's, not the incubator's portfolio. A sentence about patents filed by incubatees has its number missing from the published text.

Government support

KTBI grew out of a DST-NSTEDB Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre, and states three times that it is recognised by the Ministry of MSME under the scheme "Support for Entrepreneurial and Managerial Development of MSME's through Incubator". That recognition is dated only as "recently". Other named backers are the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India in Ahmedabad, which channels DST-NIMAT support for the awareness and technology entrepreneurship programmes, and the Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation Institute in Chennai, which channels Tamil Nadu's Innovation Voucher Programme. The site also reports DST cash awards for entrepreneurship activity in 2017-18 and 2018-19. KTBI appears in none of the five DST NIDHI incubator registers, checked on 25 September 2026, so it holds no NIDHI technology business incubator designation.

Rankings that belong to the university, not the incubator

The same page carries two placements in the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements — top 100 in 2019, top 25 among deemed universities in Band A in 2020 — and a four-star rating for the Institution's Innovation Council approved in 2018-19. These rank an institution. They are not an incubator recognition, and the latest is from 2020.

Who runs it and where it is

The Vice-Chancellor is named chief mentor of the IDEA Lab, which the Director of Research and Development coordinates with the Head of KTBI — the same person is TBI Manager and President of the Institution's Innovation Council. The NISP coordinator is the Deputy Dean of Kalasalingam Business School. The campus is at Anand Nagar, Krishnankoil 626126; the university also runs a Chennai campus. Jobs are advertised on the university's careers page, and the startup pages sit under Campus Life beside the IDEA Lab and NISP pages.