LEAF – GLS University Incubator

Before you apply

• Check your subject first. LEAF works in internet of things, analytics and big data, information and communication technology, and mobile-enabled services, and its form only lets you pick one of four fields: ICT, IoT, analytics or social enterprise. If your idea sits outside that ground, this is not the right incubator.
• You do not need a registered company. The form asks which legal entity you PROPOSE to form — proprietorship, partnership or LLP — so an unincorporated team can apply.
• You do not need to be from GLS University. Nothing on the form asks about it, and the incubator's space holds outside companies alongside students.

How applications work

There is one route in: the application form on LEAF's own site. There is no dated call to wait for, and no separate form for a desk — the same form has a field for whether you need space and for how long.

The form is long, so set aside time. It asks for your organisation and contact details, a CV for every person on the team with their qualification and years of experience, how long you have been going, your innovation in about 500 words, and what makes it different from anything similar in about 300 words. It also asks for the current status of the project and for your business plan, marketing plan and financial plan as attachments in PDF or Word.

If you would rather ask a question before filling all that in, write to leaf@glsuniversity.ac.in or call the number on the contact page.

How selection works

Applications are scrutinised by a screening panel rather than by one office. LEAF says the panel brings together venture capitalists, startup founders, mentors, domain experts in the technology and management of the area you are working in, its own director and chief executive, and business entrepreneurs and academics from the same domain.

What the panel weighs depends on how far along you are. LEAF sets out five venture stages and different criteria at each:

• Conceptualising the venture and the business model — whether you personally have the business or technical knowledge to develop the idea, how novel the concept is, and what your team brings in education, work experience and references.
• Building the technology or product — the merit of what you are building, your intellectual property, how well your own team understands the product, and the market potential of it.
• Market testing and refining the product — all of the above plus how far the product has actually got and whether the market has validated the model.
• Market entry — team capability, early traction, pilot clients and investor feedback.
• Scaling up and raising money — revenue being generated, user feedback and traction.

Seed support tracks the same ladder. LEAF says it is not available while you are still conceptualising; it opens once you are developing a product, and the ceiling it describes rises at the scaling-up stage.

What reviewers look for

Innovation, market potential, how well you know your own project, and how convincingly you present it are the four things LEAF names when it describes a screening session. Come with a working answer on differentiation — the form asks for it twice, once as a written question and again in the business plan — and be specific about what stage your product is really at, because the criteria you will be judged on follow from that answer.

A note on timing

LEAF's site does not advertise a current intake or a deadline, and the news on it has not been refreshed for some time, though the pages themselves are still being maintained. Write to the inbox to confirm an intake is open before you spend a day on the attachments.

LEAF – GLS University Incubator is a technology business incubator in Ellisbridge, Ahmedabad, supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. LEAF stands for Leadership Entrepreneurship and Acceleration Foundation, and it was promoted in 2015 by GLS University and Gujarat Law Society, the Ahmedabad education group that has run institutions in the city since 1927. It sits on the GLS campus opposite Law Garden, and it works with founders building in the internet of things, big data and analytics, information and communication technology, and mobile-enabled services.

In the Department of Science and Technology's own list of technology business incubators, GLS University is recorded as the host institute and the incubator is listed separately under its own name. That is the right way to read LEAF: a body hosted on a university campus and drawing on the university's rooms, library and people, but with its own application route, its own screening panel and its own portfolio of outside companies. LEAF also says it is a nodal institute of the Government of Gujarat for a state start-up assistance programme, and that it disburses state funds to startups in the Ahmedabad region. That second claim is LEAF's own and the state's portal does not load without a browser, so we could not check it against a government list.

How incubation works

LEAF describes a six-phase method it says it built with its partners and tested with startups and students. It begins with two weeks of design thinking, idea validation and pivoting, where teams settle roles and collect feedback from users and mentors. Four weeks of product building follow, in which teams fix their specifications, finalise a blueprint and build the parts, with technical mentors helping on the build. Two weeks of product testing and business modelling come next, spent in the field validating the model. A six-week stretch on product marketing, partnerships and communications follows, then a demo day in front of incubator staff, investors and invited stakeholders, and finally market entry, when the product goes out and marketing begins.

Alongside that, LEAF runs a three-stage engagement model it says is benchmarked against the MaRS Discovery District in Canada: developing the startup and connecting it to its entrepreneurship programmes, evolving it towards revenue sufficiency, then accelerating it and preparing it to graduate out of the incubator.

Selected startups can receive seed support, and LEAF ties that to the stage the venture is at. Teams still conceptualising a venture are not eligible for it; support becomes available once a team is developing a product, and larger support is described at the scaling-up stage.

Who can apply

LEAF does not publish an eligibility paragraph, so read the application form as the statement of who it wants. It asks for an organisation, institute or project, a contact person, team CVs, and the legal entity the team proposes to form — proprietorship, partnership, LLP or something else. That means an unincorporated team can apply and there is no requirement to be a registered company first. The form asks nothing about being a GLS student, alumnus or employee, and the incubator's own description of its space distinguishes companies already working out of it from GLS students using it temporarily, so this is not a students-only centre.

The real gate is the subject. The form lets applicants pick one of four fields — information and communication technology, internet of things, analytics, or social enterprise — and LEAF's thrust-area page sets out the same ground plus mobile-enabled services. A team outside those areas is applying against the grain.

Facilities

The incubation space runs to 15,000 sq. ft., of which LEAF says 10,000 sq. ft. is in use. There is an older area of about 40 seats and a newer 100-seat facility, with cubicle workstations wired for electricity, internet and phone, and separate enclosed offices for companies that want privacy. GLS University's page puts the co-working capacity at 120 seats, which does not quite square with the incubator's own two numbers, so treat any seat count as approximate.

Two conference rooms are available, seating 25 and 12, both wired for tele-conferencing and fitted with whiteboards. LEAF lists 40 computers at the incubator, a MAC lab, printing in colour and black and white, high-speed WiFi, air conditioning, a lounge, a canteen, a gym, parking, round-the-clock security and housekeeping. Prototyping and 3D printing are listed among the facilities added with the newer space; an IoT lab with laser cutting, vinyl cutting, circuit printers and a milling machine is described on another page as still being developed, so ask what is working before you count on it. Through the university, incubatees also reach the libraries attached to each institute and a 300-seat auditorium with seminar halls, on demand.

On the services side LEAF lists business, technical and financial advisory, market intelligence, partnership development, talent development, executive and professional development, corporate innovation work, community events and market development programmes. Mentoring is scheduled on three days a week, from a mix of in-house mentors who are available on every slot and part-time mentors who come in on demand, and a training calendar runs in two six-month cycles. LEAF also says it offers soft-landing help for founders going abroad through tie-ups with incubators in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, and it has an older agreement with LaunchPad PEI in Prince Edward Island, Canada around that country's start-up visa route.

Scale

LEAF names twelve associated startups on its site: Welvet, AND APP, Dezine Brainz, DOCSTUB, Lomoso, Openfuel, Bugskan, PREAB, Myriad, Tasol Global, Trips on Bid and Valetise. Its home page counters claim more than thirty associated startups, more than 200 jobs created by them, and more than 70 events organised. Those counters are self-reported and carry no date, and they do not reconcile with the twelve names on the same page.

Events and where it is

LEAF has an events page, though the sessions described on it are older ones — investor and pitch clinics, intellectual property sessions, digital marketing workshops, and appearances at state startup summits in Gandhinagar and at TiECON Ahmedabad with TiE and eChai. The incubator is at the GLS campus, above the auditorium, opposite Law Garden, Ellisbridge, Ahmedabad 380006. The general inbox is leaf@glsuniversity.ac.in.