SCTIMST-TIMed

Work out which door you need

• You have an idea and need to build a first prototype: NIDHI PRAYAS is the route. It takes individual innovators as well as young startups, and you do not have to be incubating at TIMed first.
• You have a device and want space, labs and regulatory help: apply for incubation. It is physical incubation on the Biomedical Technology Wing campus, for up to 36 months.
• You are already incubating at TIMed and need seed money: the NIDHI Seed Support System is only open to resident incubatees of at least three months' standing.
• You only need the institute's testing or characterisation done: SCTIMST offers testing and biological evaluation as a service, and TIMed lists that access as part of what incubatees get.
• You need patents, licensing or a technology-transfer office: go to TIPS@TIMed. It is open to institutions and startups across India, sector agnostic, and charges per service.

How incubation applications work

• There is no deadline and no cohort. Applications are reviewed as they arrive.
• Send a business plan by email, or a short write-up through the form on the contacts page, and expect to be invited to present.
• An expert committee makes the call. Plan for a presentation, not just a written submission.
• Office space is on rental. Ask about space charges early, because the site does not publish them.

What the committee looks at

TIMed lists the criteria it applies, so answer them directly:

• Innovation content — what is genuinely new in the device.
• Market need — the unmet clinical need it addresses.
• Technology readiness and time to market — where the device actually is today.
• Your ability to invest or raise funding — it asks about this explicitly.
• Team profile and motivation.
• Why you need the incubator — show which of its labs, clean space, testing or regulatory help you cannot get elsewhere. This is a stated criterion, not a formality.

Before you apply for NIDHI PRAYAS

• It must be a physical product. Pure software, e-commerce, service solutions and app-based products are excluded, as is funding for research or internships at an institution.
• It must be pre-prototype. Proposals for products already past prototype stage are not eligible.
• It must be finishable in eighteen months.
• Check the ownership rules. An individual applicant must be an Indian citizen aged 18 or over with government-approved proof of nationality; a startup must be incorporated in India, no more than seven years old, with at least 51% of equity held by Indian citizens, under the stated turnover ceiling, and not already funded for the same prototype elsewhere.
• Teams nominate one lead innovator who applies and receives the funds, so agree that in writing first.
• Assessment weighs clinical relevance, social impact, team composition and the potential to form a company and to attract follow-on funding. Bootstrapped applicants, those with a co-investment commitment, women innovators and young innovators are given preference.

Practical notes

• Write to the institutional inbox on the contacts page, timed@sctimst.ac.in, or call the incubator's landline. The NIDHI PRAYAS project coordinator is listed separately on that programme's page.
• Parts of the site are old — several sections read "to be updated", and some listed events are several years past. Confirm current intake and charges by email before planning around them.
• If you are outside India, say so up front: TIMed states it will consider startups anywhere in the world that plan to enter the Indian market or need inputs from India.

SCTIMST-TIMed is a technology business incubator for medical devices and biomaterials in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. It is a not-for-profit registered society, promoted in 2015 by Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST), and it sits inside the institute's Biomedical Technology Wing campus at Poojapura. It is financially supported by the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation and by the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, and it was launched on 16 May 2015 by the then Union Minister for Science and Technology.

TIMed is a separate organisation from its host. SCTIMST is an Institute of National Importance created by an Act of Parliament, with a hospital, a biomedical technology wing and a school of public health under one roof; that status belongs to the institute, not to the incubator. What TIMed adds is an incubator on that campus, with its own board, its own floor space and labs, and a stated route for outside founders to use the institute's testing and evaluation facilities.

Who it is for

TIMed sets out a broad list of who may approach it: student innovators, professors, clinicians, surgeons, technicians, engineers, entrepreneurs and startup companies, as well as small and medium enterprises. What it asks for is an innovative solution to an unmet clinical need, or know-how, an IP position or a strategy for producing affordable medical devices, a commitment to safe and reliable devices, and the ability to invest or to raise funding. It also says a startup located anywhere in the world may apply if it plans to enter the Indian market or needs specific inputs from India. There is no requirement to be a student or an alumnus of SCTIMST, and the seed-funding recipients it lists include a company registered in Salem, Tamil Nadu.

How incubation works

Applications are continuous rather than cohort-based. You email a business plan or send a short write-up through the form on the contacts page, and TIMed invites you to present to an expert committee. It weighs innovation content, market need, technology readiness, time to market, your ability to invest or raise funding, the profile of the team and its motivation, and whether you can show a real need for incubation on site. Incubation is physical, for a maximum of 36 months, reviewed by the programme committee. Office space is on rental, so incubation is not free, and no rates are published.

Mentoring is offered on both the business and the technical side, matched to the stage the device is at. Alongside that it offers support in setting up a venture with finance, legal, HR and regulatory inputs, professional assistance with risk analysis, regulatory compliance, quality management systems, documentation and ethical clearance, and training on biocompatibility, risk management, human factors engineering, packaging and sterilization and biomaterials selection. For a first-time device founder that regulatory and quality work is the substance of the offer.

Grant support

TIMed runs two Department of Science & Technology schemes. NIDHI PRAYAS is a prototyping grant for idea-stage innovators with a physical product, open to individual innovators as well as young startups, and its page carries a funding call for 2024-25. It excludes pure software, e-commerce, service solutions and app-based products, and anything already past prototype stage; the prototype has to be completable within eighteen months. The second is the NIDHI Seed Support System, for which DST selected TIMed as one of its technology business incubators. That one is only for startups already incubating on site: a company registered in India, with at least three months' residency at TIMed and at least 51% Indian promoter shareholding. A committee chaired by the Director of SCTIMST decides, and assistance can take the form of debt or a soft loan, quasi-equity or equity.

Facilities

TIMed's own facilities are office space and hot desks on rental; a wet lab for chemical, polymer, biochemistry, biotechnology and ceramic work, with a fume hood, laboratory gases and basic bench equipment; a dry lab for electro-mechanical and instrumentation projects; a clean work space rated class 10,000 with a class 100 laminar flow bench for final assembly; and specialised utilities for device production, including reagent water, ultrasonic cleaning, packaging sealers and ETO and steam sterilizers. There is also a conference room, a meeting room, an ideation space and a lounge.

Separately, TIMed lists the SCTIMST facilities its incubatees can use. They are the institute's, not the incubator's: analytical characterisation including HPLC, LCMS, GC, thermal analysis, UV, FTIR, Raman and atomic force microscopy; electron, confocal and optical microscopy; mechanical, surface and coating characterisation; device in vitro evaluation and in silico validation; design and simulation workstations; and metrology and calibration. On the services side the institute offers testing on material characterisation and biological evaluation, large animal experiments, IP services, support from its clinical community and coordination of clinical trials. For a medical device team that access is usually the point of being on this campus.

Technology transfer and IP

TIMed hosts TIPS@TIMed, a regional technology transfer office set up under BIRAC's National Biopharma Mission, one of seven in that network. It is sector agnostic and open to academia, research institutions, startups and SMEs across India, not only to TIMed incubatees. It does prior-art, patentability and landscape searches, market analysis, patent drafting and Indian filing support, licensing and industry scouting, spin-off support, and IP and technology-transfer training. It also helps institutions set up their own IP cells and transfer offices. Its services are charged, on a published table with three tiers; the cheapest is for startups and innovators at TIMed.

Who runs it

TIMed is governed by a board chaired ex officio by the President of SCTIMST, with the institute's Director as vice chairman, and nominees of DST and of the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation. Outside members include C. Balagopal, founder and former chairman and managing director of Terumo Penpol; Ajay Pitre of Pitre Business Ventures, who co-chairs FICCI's medical device forum; and Jitendra Sharma of AP MedTech Zone. Day to day it is run by a member secretary and chief executive drawn from the Biomedical Technology Wing, with an executive committee of institute scientists and clinicians.

Startups it has backed

Named incubatees include Sascan Meditech, on screening and biopsy guidance for oral and cervical cancers; Alicorn Medical, on wound care biomaterials; Mobilexion Technologies, whose telemedicine cart was the first product launched by a TIMed incubatee; Evelabs Technologies, on infusion monitoring; Indriyam Biologics, on sensor-based devices; SRH Nutritions; and Ignitarium's medical imaging work. Ellipsor Health, Zumheilen Healthcare and Sweptron Healthcare are listed as former incubatees. Seven startups are named as having received seed support at TIMed, with first disbursements in 2019 and 2021. TIMed publishes no total for startups supported, jobs created or funding mobilised.

Where it is

TIMed is on the fifth floor of the M S Valiathan Block in the Biomedical Technology Wing campus of SCTIMST, on Mudavanmugal Road in Poojapura, Thiruvananthapuram, about 4 km from Trivandrum Central railway station and 10 km from Trivandrum International airport. It keeps a jobs page, though no openings are posted on it, and an events page covering talks and workshops held on the campus.