REVA NEST

Work out which door you need

• You have an idea and no product yet. Pre-incubation is the stage for you: workshops, peer learning and mentoring aimed at a first working version.
• You have a company and want space, mentors and introductions. Apply for incubation, and choose Physical Incubation on the form if you want a desk or cabin on campus.
• You are outside Bengaluru or don't need the space. Choose Virtual Incubation on the same form.
• You are early-stage and want a structured twelve months. The accelerator programme is the one to ask about — there is no separate form for it, so raise it in your application or by email.
• You just want to learn how to write a plan. Watch for the boot camps rather than applying for incubation.

Check you are eligible before you write anything

• REVA NEST admits registered REVA University students, current REVA faculty, REVA alumni, and start-up firms less than two years old.
• If you have no REVA connection, you are applying under the last category, so your company's incorporation date decides it. Over two years old and you do not fit.
• The thrust areas are internet of things, electronic system design and manufacturing, robotics and intelligent systems, clean and renewable energy, bio and life sciences, art and design, agriculture and allied industries, and water and sewage. A software business with no technology depth is a weak fit.
• The application accepts any stage from idea to revenue, so being pre-product is not a reason to hold back.

What the application asks for

The form is long and wants substance in every box. Have answers ready for:

• Your team and your background.
• What your company does and what the products are.
• Which stage the product is at — idea, prototype, private beta, public beta or revenue.
• The problem you are solving, and what is genuinely different about your solution.
• Your value proposition for the customer.
• Who your competitors are and what your advantage over them is.
• Your revenue model.
• The size of the market you are going after.
• How you market, or plan to market, what you sell.
• Whether you want physical or virtual incubation.

You also upload a detailed business proposal, so write that first and use it to answer the boxes rather than the other way round.

How selection works

• The application is reviewed, then your business plan is evaluated by a selection committee the incubator appoints.
• Expect to present. The site says you may be selected at the first interview, or asked to reframe the plan and come back — a rewrite request is normal, not a rejection.
• Come prepared to say what you actually need: how much space, power, furniture and internet.
• Selected incubatees sign an agreement before admission formalities. The format is published on the resources page, so read it before you apply.

What reviewers are looking for

• Originality and knowledge depth. The stated bar is a product, process, software algorithm or hardware design that is knowledge-based and original, at the beginning of its technology cycle.
• A plan that survives hard questions about money — the boot camp description is explicit that founders usually arrive unable to answer them.
• A reason you need this campus in particular. Access to the university's laboratories, centres of excellence and fabrication lab is the strongest part of the offer, so say which ones your product needs and why.

Practical notes

• Download the incubation policy, the checklist and the office-space application from the resources page before you start. They tell you what the agreement commits you to.
• Fees are not published. Broadband and telephone lines are charged for, and some mentoring is paid, so ask what incubation actually costs before you sign.
• Equity is not mentioned anywhere on the site. Ask directly rather than assuming either way.
• General enquiries go to info@revanest.com. The incubator's site is revanest.com — the address with www in front of it does not load correctly.

REVA NEST is the technology business incubator on REVA University's campus at Rukmini Knowledge Park in Yelahanka, north Bengaluru. It works out of the C V Raman Block and is registered as its own company — RAY Foundation, or REVA Aspiring Youth Foundation, a Section 8 company under the Companies Act 2013. It sits inside the university's Industry Interaction Centre (UIIC), and Dr. Kiran Kumari Patil directs both.

How programmes work

There is one way in, and it covers everything. You fill the incubation application on the REVA NEST site, describe your team, your product and the problem you are solving, choose physical or virtual incubation, and upload a business proposal. What happens next is set out as four steps: the application is reviewed, the business plan is evaluated by a selection committee the incubator appoints, and selected incubatees sign an agreement before admission formalities. The agreement format is published on the site's resources page alongside an incubation policy, a checklist and an application for office space.

Inside incubation, REVA NEST describes three depths of support. Pre-incubation is for people with an idea and no product yet — structured workshops with experts, peer learning and individual mentoring, aimed at getting to a first working version. Incubation is the resident stage, with help on company registration, mentoring, investor and venture-capital introductions, investor meets and pitch events. A separate accelerator programme runs twelve months and is aimed at early-stage start-ups; selected teams get mentorship, strategic direction and introductions to Indian and overseas mentors and partners. Boot camps sit outside all of that: short formats, run over a weekend or across several weeks, for first-time founders who need to write a business plan and think through their numbers before asking anyone for money.

Two more programmes on the site are for REVA students rather than outside founders. Entrepreneurship awareness camps are run by the university's innovation and entrepreneurship cell for engineering and science students, under a Department of Science and Technology scheme supported by the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India. Ideation workshops and a student space club are campus activities.

Who can apply

REVA NEST names four groups: registered REVA University students, current REVA faculty, REVA alumni, and start-up firms less than two years old. That last category is the route for founders with no connection to the university, and the two-year age limit is a real gate — if your company is older, this is not the programme for you. The site's own answers to common questions are broader, saying any individual or group with an original, knowledge-based product, process, software algorithm or hardware design at the start of the technology cycle can become an incubatee, and that you may have to present to a committee and state what you need in terms of space, power, furniture and internet. Read the four categories as the rule and the broader wording as the spirit.

The thrust areas are internet of things, electronic system design and manufacturing, robotics and intelligent systems, clean and renewable energy, bio and life sciences, and art and design. Its brochure adds agriculture and allied industries, and water and sewage. The application form accepts anything from an idea to a revenue-stage product.

Facilities

Admitted companies get office space with basic furniture, and there is co-working space and private cabins, a twenty-seat board room on request, and meeting rooms with projection equipment. Shared infrastructure includes a printer, photocopier and scanner, a pantry, the university library, business labs and 3D printing. Broadband and telephone lines are charged for. Beyond that, REVA NEST's pitch is access to the host university: incubatees can use departmental laboratories for product development, plus REVA's centres of excellence in electronics and communication, design and manufacturing, construction and biotechnology, and REVA FABLAB, the university's digital fabrication lab. Those belong to the university, not the incubator, and the site does not list what equipment is in them.

On the services side, REVA NEST offers a pool of mentors covering technology, legal and financial matters — some of it paid for — advice from university faculty on product development, patenting, commercialisation, marketing, business set-up and hiring, and support with intellectual property through REVA's IPR cell, which handles patent filing at Indian and international level, design registration, copyright and trademarks. It also names consulting services and says it intends to provide seed support for promising projects, though no scheme page or route for that exists on the site.

Track record

The published numbers are the incubator's own and carry no date. Its pages claim 82 startups incubated, 482 incubates supported, 564 jobs created, more than 50 expert mentors and over 100 ecosystem partners and memoranda of understanding. Its 2023 brochure gave lower figures for the same things, which is consistent with growth but means none of these is fixed to a moment in time. The activity count is the least reliable: one page carries two different totals for events, and the brochure a third. Eleven incubated companies are named, across drones and aerial data, robotics and automation, biotech contract research, ed-tech, extended reality and enterprise software. REVA NEST also reports two awards of its own — a best-incubator award at an Aspire Media schools event in December 2021, and a startup-project-of-the-year award at a 2020 summit.

Recognition

REVA NEST states on its own pages, and on the university's, that it is recognised by MSME and supported by the Government of Karnataka's Department of Science and Technology. The Ministry of MSME's live list of host institutes under its incubation scheme does carry an entry for REVA University at this campus address — under the university's name, not the incubator's, because the recognition is institutional. Neither the incubator's pages nor the ministry's list gives a date or a period, so whether the backing is current cannot be told from either. Nothing on any REVA NEST page claims an Atal Incubation Centre, an AIM NITI Aayog tie, a DST NIDHI recognition or DPIIT recognition, despite third-party writeups that describe it as an Atal centre.

Who runs it and where

Dr. Kiran Kumari Patil is director. Ms. Malathi R is the manager and the contact named across the site, with Mr. Adithya Poojary as assistant manager and Ms. Vanitha R and Ms. Arshiya Ambreen as corporate executives and trainers. A governing council chaired by the university's chancellor, Dr. P. Shyama Raju, sits over it, with institutional seats for the MSME Development Institute, Laghu Udyog Bharati, KASSIA and the Peenya Industrial Associations. A separate panel of industry advisors and a mentor bench of practising founders and consultants is listed on the about page. There is one location: REVA NEST, C V Raman Block, Rukmini Knowledge Park, Kattigenahalli, Yelahanka, Bengaluru 560064. Enquiries go to info@revanest.com or the campus number. The site also publishes news and events, though the most recent dated entry there is from 2024.