KLE CTIE (KLE Technological University)

Work out which door you need

CTIE runs one enquiry form for everything, so the reason you pick is what routes you:

• Apply for Incubation — you are a founder outside the university wanting space, mentors and access to its funding schemes.
• Student Program — you are a KLE Tech student looking at Make in BVB, PUPA, Butterfly, Ideation Camp, Buildathon or the Minor in Entrepreneurship.
• Researcher — you want the university's research labs for commercialising research.
• Mentorship Inquiry or Corporate Partnership — everything else.

How applications actually work

• There is no portal, no form id and no deadline. The enquiry form is the whole route in, and ctie@kletech.ac.in is the alternative.
• Nothing on the site describes a selection committee, a pitch day or a scoring process, so expect a conversation rather than a formal round.
• No fee and no equity terms are published either way. Ask about both in your first email so you are not guessing.

Before you write

• Say which campus suits you. CTIE has space at BVB Vidyanagar in Hubballi, at KLE IT in Hubballi, and at Dr. M. S. Sheshgiri College in Belagavi. Naming one makes the enquiry concrete.
• Name the lab you need. If you build electronics, the Electronics Enabling Lab with its RF, thermal and vibration equipment and anechoic chamber for EMI and EMC testing is the strongest reason to be here. If you build mechanical products, say what the Makerspace machine shop would do for you.
• Ask which scheme is open now. CTIE lists TIDE 2.0, NIDHI Seed Support, the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme and the ESDM-focused HEX, but it publishes no dates for any of them, and the HEX page says a second programme announcement is still awaited. Ask which are currently taking applications before you build a plan around one.
• Check the ESDM fit. The sectors it names are ESDM and VLSI, embedded systems, IoT, AI and machine learning, IT services, foodtech, medtech, agritech, edtech, biotech, automotive, robotics, healthtech, mechatronics, defence, drones and deep tech.

Do not confuse it with its neighbours

CNEST at the Belagavi campus is a separate company backed by the Karnataka Department of IT and BT, and KLE Institute of Technology is a different institution in the same trust. If you mean CTIE, write to CTIE's own inbox.

KLE CTIE is the technology business incubator of KLE Technological University in Hubballi, Karnataka. Its full name is the Centre for Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and it sits on the university's BVB campus at Vidyanagar, with two further centres added in 2023 — one on the KLE IT campus in Hubballi and one at Dr. M. S. Sheshgiri College in Belagavi. Incubation on campus started in 2007 as an initiative called Startup Street; CTIE itself was registered in 2012 as a society under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act, 1960. Its stated aim is to foster, enable and grow the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem in Tier-II cities in India.

How incubation works

CTIE describes a two-pronged model. On one side it attracts and supports entrepreneurs from outside the university with incubation space, mentoring and access to funding schemes. On the other it works with the university's own students through Make in BVB, a student body formed in 2014 that runs competitions, workshops and courses. The two streams share the same space, mentors and labs.

There is no cohort calendar. The site publishes no intake window, no deadline, no selection process and no fee or equity terms for incubation. The single route in is an enquiry form headed Apply for Incubation, which asks for your name, email, an optional phone number, a reason and a short description of your idea. The reason list separates incubation applications from mentorship enquiries, corporate partnerships, student programmes and researchers.

Who can apply

Outside founders are explicitly included: CTIE says it attracts and supports external entrepreneurs, and it splits its audience three ways on its home page into entrepreneurs and startups, students, and researchers and faculty. It states no incorporation requirement, no turnover or age limit, no domicile rule and no requirement to be a student or employee of the university. North Karnataka is described as CTIE's own focus, not as a condition on who it will take. The student programmes are the exception and are genuinely internal: Butterfly takes second and third-year students, the Minor in Entrepreneurship runs from second year to pre-final year, and Buildathon is run for students of KLE Tech.

Government schemes it runs

Most of what CTIE offers a funded startup comes through national schemes it says it has been sanctioned to operate. It states that it was recognised as a Technology Business Incubator by the Department of Science and Technology in 2015, selected as a G2 centre under MeitY's TIDE 2.0 scheme in 2019, recognised by NSTEDB at DST as a NIDHI Seed Support Scheme centre in 2021, and approved under the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme in 2023. Each of those claims is CTIE's own; none of its pages gives a sanction period, so whether a scheme is still funded and taking applications cannot be told from the site, and there is no scheme-specific application form behind any of them.

Alongside these it launched the Hubli ESDM eXchange, or HEX, in 2020 with the Government of Karnataka and the India Electronics & Semiconductor Association, as an incubation centre for electronics system design and manufacturing and VLSI startups. Its page says five startups have been supported and a second programme announcement is awaited, so HEX is between intakes rather than open.

Facilities

CTIE reports more than 45,000 sq ft of incubation space across its three campuses, along with auditoriums, conference halls and meeting rooms; a counter elsewhere on the site gives the space as 50,000, so treat the figure as approximate. A Tech Park with 30,000 sq. ft. of incubation area was added in 2016.

Two workshops are its own. The Makerspace covers 5000 square feet — a 2000 sq. ft. machine shop, a 1000 sq. ft. model shop and a 2000 sq. ft. project work area — for design, prototyping and manufacture of electro-mechanical products. The Electronics Enabling Lab, set up in 2019, holds RF, thermal and vibration testing equipment and an anechoic chamber for EMI and EMC testing, which is the hard part of getting an electronics product to market and the reason the ESDM focus is credible.

Beyond its own floor, CTIE offers access to facilities that belong to the university. The Thinkering Lab is a small prototyping facility built for first-year engineering students on the Engineering Exploration course. Seven research centres, which CTIE calls STAR Labs, cover visual intelligence, material science, energy and environment, intelligent mobility with Nvidia and LTTS, electric vehicles with LTTS, healthcare AI, and automation and robotics. Those are the university's research centres, not the incubator's equipment.

Scale

CTIE's own pages disagree about how many startups it has supported. Its home page, its About page and its 2025 impact graphic say 185 or more; its footer and its page description say 145 or more. Because both figures come from the same site we have not published either as this provider's startup count. It is consistent about having more than 50 business mentors; it reports roughly 3,000 jobs created against a lower figure of 2,500 elsewhere on the same site. It was given the Social Initiative of the Year award at TiECON 2022.

Six startups are named on its success-stories page: Sankalp Semiconductor, a VLSI design company it says was acquired by HCL; Navya Biologicals, which it says was acquired by Shilpa Medicare; Snaptrude in proptech; LabInApp, a student venture in remote laboratory access; GDV Research, a faculty venture in deep tech; and Physics Motors in electric vehicles.

CTIE, CNEST and the Belagavi campus

Three entrepreneurship bodies sit inside KLE Tech and are easy to confuse. CTIE is this one, the university-wide incubator registered in 2012 in Hubballi, which extended to the Belagavi campus in 2023. CNEST, the Centre for Next-Gen Entrepreneurship in Science & Technology, is a separate Section 8 company at the Belagavi campus backed by Karnataka's Department of IT and BT under the state's TBI 2.0 initiative, with its own address and committees. The K-Tech Innovation Hub on the same Belagavi campus is the university's New Age Incubation Network centre. Same trust, same campuses, different entities and different funders.

Partners

On the industry side CTIE names Samsung, L&T, NVIDIA, Bosch Global Software Technologies and the India Electronics & Semiconductor Association. On the academic and clinical side it names the University of Agricultural Sciences Dharwad for agritech, and Ayurveda Mahavidyala & Hospital in Hubli and the Karnataka Cancer Therapy and Research Institute for medtech, biotech and healthtech mentoring and basic testing. For programmes and investor introductions it names GINSERV in Bengaluru, Deshpande Startups and the Karnataka Digital Economy Mission. Through TIDE 2.0 it says it is connected with 51 incubation centres nationally.

Who runs it, and where

The site names no incubator staff — no director, no chief executive, no programme managers. The only person named on it is Dr. Ashok Shettar, Pro Chancellor of KLE Technological University, who writes the welcome message on the About page. Job openings are advertised on the university's own careers page rather than CTIE's site, and CTIE publishes galleries of past startup expos and workshops but no events calendar.

The main centre is at KLE Technological University, BVB Campus, Vidyanagar, Hubballi, Karnataka 580031, and enquiries go to ctie@kletech.ac.in.