MANIT Rolta Innovation and Incubation Foundation, MANIT Bhopal

Choose the right route in

There is one incubation intake, and it takes both MANIT people and outsiders — but they are judged in separate rounds and the lists are published separately. Say clearly in your application which group you are in. If you are not connected to MANIT, apply as an individual, a team, an entity or a registered firm; the notices name all four.

If you are not ready to be incubated, the MSME-sponsored short courses the Foundation runs are a lower-commitment way in. They are open to people from anywhere in India, run for a few days on campus, and recent editions have had no registration fee.

Watch the round, not the calendar

Applications are not open continuously. A round opens with a notice on the ROLTA Incubation Centre page of the MANIT site, carries a closing date, and closes. Extensions are common — several rounds have been pushed back by a few days or weeks — so check the page again even if the printed date has passed.

Get the paperwork right

• Download the application form linked from that round's notice and use it. Do not send a deck in place of the form.
• Write the business plan in the format the Foundation prescribes.
• Send both a hard copy to the Rolta Incubation Centre at MANIT and a soft copy by email to the address on the notice. Sending only one is the easiest way to be left out.
• If you are a registered firm or company, have your incorporation documents ready; selected startups sign an agreement with the Foundation and submit supporting documents.

Prepare for the presentation

Selection turns on a business plan presentation to a committee, not on a written score alone. The committee is made up largely of MANIT faculty plus outside members from industry and other institutes, so write for technically literate generalists rather than specialists in your field.

The outcomes the centre says it expects from incubatees tell you what it is looking for: a working prototype or product, intellectual property, a registered firm with DPIIT recognition, and revenue. Show which of those you can reach inside a year, and be concrete about what you would use the campus labs, workshops and computing for — that is the part of the offer a campus incubator can judge best.

Know what you are signing up for

• Incubation is for one year, extendable to three on performance, and the extension is granted without funding.
• The seed grant and the support for patent and registration costs are for currently enrolled MANIT students only. Applicants from outside are described as self-financed, and space is offered at a subsidised rate rather than free.
• No fee schedule is published, so ask what the space will cost you before you commit.

MANIT ROLTA Innovation and Incubation Foundation (MRIIF) is the not-for-profit company through which Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal runs its startup incubation. MANIT registered it as a Section 8 company in 2024; the incubation centre it operates, the ROLTA Incubation Centre, has been running on the MANIT campus since 4 September 2014. Both the Foundation and the centre sit on the institute campus on Link Road Number 3, near Kali Mata Mandir, in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.

The ROLTA name comes from the centre's founding gift. Kamal K. Singh, then chairman of the Rolta Group of Industries and an alumnus of MANIT, inaugurated the centre in 2014 and paid for the building and the infrastructure needed to start it. That was a one-off capital gift. Nothing the centre publishes today describes any continuing role for the Rolta Group in running it, funding it or sitting on its boards, so read the name as a founding donor's, not as a live corporate partnership.

Who can apply

This is the part founders most often get wrong about campus incubators, and here the answer is plain. The centre's own invitation notices say eligibility is any student, faculty member, individual or entity, of MANIT or outside MANIT Bhopal. The August 2025 notice spells it out as two groups: students, student teams, faculty and staff of MANIT; and, from outside MANIT, any individual, team, entity or registered firm. Applicants are asked to have a novel and commercially viable idea. You do not need an incorporated company to apply, and registered firms are welcome.

The outside route is not theoretical. The centre publishes its selection lists, and alongside an eighth round of selections for MANIT students, faculty and staff it has published a second round of selections specifically for firms, teams, entities and individuals from outside MANIT.

One thing is restricted by student status. The seed grant the centre offers goes only to currently enrolled MANIT students, as does its support for patent, copyright and firm-registration costs. The 2025 notice says other selected startups may be accommodated as self-financed entities. If you are applying from outside, plan on paying your own way and treat the space, labs, mentoring and networks as what you are getting.

How incubation works

Incubation runs for one year and can be extended up to three years depending on how the startup performs; the 2025 notice adds that the extension is granted without funding and on approval.

Selected startups get space at the centre — furnished, semi-furnished or unfurnished, sized to what the entity needs, at what the centre calls a subsidised rate — with internet, electricity and water. They get access to MANIT's laboratories and workshops, its library, and its high-performance data centre. On the support side the centre offers mentoring and technical know-how from faculty, MANIT graduates as interns, liaison with a company secretary to incorporate the company, liaison with agencies to file patents, networking with venture capital firms and angel investors, and interaction with industry experts and entrepreneurs. The outcomes it says it expects from an incubatee are working prototypes, products or services; patents and copyrights; firm registration and DPIIT registration; and a revenue-generating company.

How to apply

There is no online portal. Each round is announced on the ROLTA Incubation Centre page of the MANIT website with its own closing date, together with a downloadable application form. You fill that form, write a business plan in the format the Foundation prescribes, deliver a hard copy to the Rolta Incubation Centre and email a soft copy to the address printed on that round's notice before the deadline. Shortlisted applicants present their business plan to a Selection Committee. Those selected sign an agreement with MRIIF and submit the documents asked for.

Rounds have opened roughly once or twice a year — published closing dates include February 2023, March 2024, August 2025, February 2026 and September 2026 — and they are frequently extended, so a date that has just passed is worth re-checking.

Training and events

Beyond incubation, the Foundation runs entrepreneurship training sponsored by the Office of the Development Commissioner (MSME), Government of India: Entrepreneurship Skill Development Programmes, Advanced ESDPs, Advanced Management Development Programmes and one-day Entrepreneurship Awareness Programmes. These are open to entrepreneurs, MSMEs, startups, aspiring entrepreneurs, faculty and research scholars from across India, not only to MANIT people, and recent editions carried no registration fee. Recent themes have been EdTech and Agri-Tech, and transportation and logistics. The centre also invites submissions to the MSME Idea Hackathon through the ministry's own portal, runs a paid summer internship on startup building for undergraduate students, and hosts an annual E-Summit with the MANIT student E-Cell.

Track record

The centre's published list of incubated startups names 19 companies taken in between 2018 and 2026, each with its founder and its company or LLP identification number, across education, health, energy, robotics, defence and other areas. Named companies on it include Prayogik Technologies, SJTech Solutions, Plat Exam, Gap Reduce Education Services, Ableon Connect, Next Shield Smart Networks, EEzyVolt Energy, VyomGuard UAV Solutions and Manitronics India. Its own documents do not agree on the total: a January 2026 brochure instead says 10 startups are operational and 23 have graduated. We have not published a single figure because of that.

Who runs it

Dr. Akhilesh Barve, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MANIT, is Chairman of the ROLTA Incubation Centre and convenor of its advisory board. Dr. Nilay Khare, MANIT's Dean (Research and Consultancy), chairs the advisory board, which also includes Prof. J. Ramkumar of IIT Kanpur, Prof. Santosh Kumar Vishvakarma, a representative of the Innovation and Incubation Centre at IISER Bhopal, and members from industry. A team of core coordinators drawn from MANIT's engineering, science and humanities departments supports the centre day to day.