Hatchlab Research Centre, SRM University-AP

Choosing the right route

There are two different doors here and they are not equally open.

• Incubation is the general route, and it is the one Hatchlab describes in the most detail — five phases from incorporation through to post-incubation. It publishes no intake dates and no eligibility rules, so pair the Apply Now link in the entrepreneurship menu with an email asking what the current intake is.
• MeitY GENESIS is the route with published rules, and it is the one written for founders who have nothing to do with the university. It runs in dated rounds rather than continuously.
• Pre-incubation is described for the university's own undergraduate and postgraduate students. If you are an outside founder, ask before assuming it is open to you.
• Lab access is separate from all three. The centre publishes a rate card of instrument charges for startups and MSMEs, so you can buy testing time without being incubated.

How applications work

For GENESIS rounds, applications go through a form linked from the centre's schemes and funding page, by a stated deadline. The last published deadline was 31 October 2025, so check the page for a live round before planning around it. For everything else, use the Apply Now link in the entrepreneurship section menu, and write to the centre at hrc@srmap.edu.in or to the directorate at entr.office@srmap.edu.in, say which programme you mean, and ask what the current intake is.

What to have ready

The GENESIS rules are the clearest statement of what this centre expects from an outside applicant, and they are a useful checklist even for the incubation route:

• DPIIT recognition for your startup
• registration in a Tier-II or Tier-III city
• a registered Indian private limited company with at least 51 per cent Indian ownership
• a working prototype, MVP or market-ready solution
• no prior funding under TIDE 2.0 Scale-up or SAMRIDH

If you are not incorporated yet, that is not automatically a problem for incubation — company incorporation happens inside the first phase of the programme, with legal and compliance support. It is a hard gate for GENESIS.

What reviewers look for

Hatchlab does not publish selection criteria, so read the phases instead. Phase 2 turns on technology readiness level, pilot results and evidence of customer fit, and Phase 3 on a go-to-market plan and investor readiness. A team that can show a working prototype, some real user validation and a clear next milestone is describing itself in the centre's own terms. If your work needs instruments — chromatography, spectroscopy, diffraction, bioprinting — say so, because that is the strongest thing this centre has.

Before you apply

Ask two questions the pages do not answer: whether the incubation programme charges anything or takes equity, and whether a founder with no link to SRM University-AP can join it outside a GENESIS round. Neither is stated anywhere on the centre's site.

Hatchlab Research Centre is the incubator at SRM University-AP, on the university's campus at Neerukonda in Mangalagiri Mandal, Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh. It sits under the university's Directorate of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which also runs the student Entrepreneurship Cell and the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning. Hatchlab is the part of that directorate a founder deals with: it runs the incubation programme, the prototyping and lab facilities, and the MeitY GENESIS funding calls.

The centre describes its own audience as the university's students, faculty, staff and alumni together with external stakeholders. That mix shows in what it has funded so far. Of the ventures listed on its funding page, most were started by SRM AP faculty members or students, and two are recorded as founded by people from outside the university.

How programmes work

Incubation at Hatchlab is set out as five phases that run from registering a company to operating on the open market. Phase 0 onboards a selected venture: the company is incorporated as a private limited company or an LLP with legal and compliance help, an incubation agreement is signed, and a baseline assessment and milestone plan are drawn up. Phase 1, called Product Garage, turns a validated idea into a prototype and then a minimum viable product, with lab and fabrication access and technical mentoring. Phase 2, the Innovation Audit, assesses technology readiness level and scalability through performance testing, pilot studies and user validation, and reworks the business model around what comes back. Phase 3, Lab to Launch, is the market-entry phase: go-to-market strategy, branding and distribution, investor connects and demo days, and then graduation out of incubation. Phase 4, Startup Vault, is the post-incubation phase, covering financial and operating strategy, partnerships and further funding.

Because incorporation happens inside Phase 0 rather than before it, an unincorporated team is not shut out of the incubation programme. Hatchlab does not publish how long each phase runs or how many startups it takes at a time.

Alongside incubation, the centre runs the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's GENESIS scheme, which exists to build startup ecosystems in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. Hatchlab has run Entrepreneur-in-Residence rounds under it, and has announced a pilot-funding component for startups running pilots with corporates, public sector undertakings or large enterprises, and a matching-investment component for startups raising from venture capital or angel investors. Both cover health tech, AI and machine learning, IoT, fintech, robotics, deep tech, cybersecurity, ICT, ed-tech, blockchain and manufacturing.

There is also a pre-incubation programme for ideas at their earliest stage. Its page welcomes any aspiring founder, but the two things it actually describes are awareness sessions for the university's undergraduates and a mindset-development programme for its postgraduates, so treat it as a campus programme unless the centre tells you otherwise.

Who can apply

The one set of eligibility rules Hatchlab publishes belongs to the GENESIS pilot and matching components, and it asks for no connection to the university at all. Applicants must be DPIIT-recognised startups registered in a Tier-II or Tier-III city, with a working prototype, an MVP or a market-ready solution. They must be registered Indian private limited companies with at least 51 per cent Indian ownership, and must not have been funded before under TIDE 2.0 Scale-up or SAMRIDH. The round that carried those rules closed at the end of October 2025 and no new date has been published, so an outside founder should write to the centre and ask when the next one opens.

The incubation programme itself publishes no eligibility rules and no selection criteria, which is the main gap on this provider's pages. It does have a way in: an Apply Now link sits in the entrepreneurship section menu on every page. It is not labelled with a programme name, so ask the centre what it covers before you fill it.

Facilities

Hatchlab lists facilities for technology development, product design and prototyping. The larger and more unusual offer is access to the university's central research instruments, which the centre publishes as a rate card with a column of prices for startups and MSMEs. The list runs to high-performance liquid chromatography systems, a 400 MHz NMR spectrometer, a 3D bioprinter, gas chromatography mass spectrometry, ICP-OES, FTIR, powder X-ray diffraction, particle size analysis, an FPLC purification system, and PCB prototyping and antenna design. For a hardware, materials or life-sciences team in coastal Andhra Pradesh this is usable whether or not you are incubated.

Who runs it

The directorate is headed by Mr Srinivasan Thirumalai, Director – Entrepreneurship and Innovation, supported by a small team of an assistant manager and two senior executives. Enquiries about Hatchlab go to the centre's own inbox.

Locations

One location: the SRM University-AP campus at Neerukonda, Mangalagiri Mandal, Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh 522240, in the Amaravati capital region. Hatchlab has no separate website; its pages sit inside the university's entrepreneurship section. The centre also lists entrepreneurship events on campus, including the Institution's Innovation Council regional meet.