Science and Technology Entrepreneurs' Park (STEP), IIT Kharagpur

Choosing the right route

STEP runs two separate things and they are not interchangeable. Apply for incubation if you have a company (or are close to having one) and want space, mentoring and a long-term relationship. Apply to the Call for Proposal if what you need is money to build one specific thing — a proof of concept, a prototype, or the next version of a product you have already built. The grant is a project sanction against milestones, not a place in a cohort.

If the grant is what you want, check first whether a call is open. Both deadlines currently published on STEP's site have passed. Ask the STEP office before you write anything.

How applications work

Incubation applications are rolling. You can fill the form on STEP's apply page or email the same material to the Managing Director's office — STEP offers both routes equally, so pick whichever lets you send a complete set.

Get the two formats first. STEP publishes its own application form and its own business plan format on the resources page, and the business plan format is specific: eleven numbered sections covering an executive summary, business objectives, current status, shareholding, three years of past financials, the technology you use today, three years of projections, a phased fund requirement tied to project milestones, present customers with evidence of their satisfaction, and future product plans. Writing your existing deck into that structure takes a day. Do it before you start the form.

Assemble the enclosures before you begin, because every one of them is required on the form: a no-objection certificate if anyone on the team is an IIT Kharagpur student, faculty member or staff member; CVs of the key people and of every director; passport, Aadhaar and PAN for every director; the company incorporation certificate; the MoA and AoA; the company PAN and TAN; and the trade licence. The form does ask whether your startup is registered yet, but you cannot supply those documents without being registered — so if you are pre-incorporation, ask STEP what it will accept rather than submitting an incomplete set.

Watch the mechanics, because this is where applications are lost. Each document goes in as a link, not an upload. Every link must be set so that anyone with it can view, and every file must be a PDF. STEP states that failing either condition means rejection, and it says so in a notice on the form itself. Open each link in a private browser window before you submit.

Grant proposals work the same way: one completed category format, compiled as a single PDF, attached as a link. Use the Category I format for proof-of-concept and prototype work and the Category II format for product development — they are different documents, and the wrong one is a wasted submission. The published call also asks for a hard copy posted to the STEP office, so allow time for that.

How selection works

Incubation runs through a Committee in four steps: your application and documents, an invitation from STEP to present, the Committee's decision after that presentation, and then the incubation agreement. Nothing is settled until the agreement is signed, and STEP says twice that signing depends on the Committee approving the incubation. Prepare to present in person rather than expecting a decision on paper.

Grant proposals are screened for completeness when they arrive, then evaluated by the Review Committee associated with STEP, and shortlisted applicants are called to present on a date notified later. If your project is approved, the Review Committee keeps reviewing it every three months, and your completion report is accepted on its recommendation.

What reviewers look for

Both routes reward the same thing: a specific, technical claim with evidence behind it. The grant categories are defined by how far along you are — an idea that needs to become a demonstrable model, or a product that needs its next step — so say plainly which of those you are, and do not describe early work as a finished product. The call weighs technology readiness explicitly: the terms note that a proposal at a higher readiness level may be considered for more support than the category's usual ceiling, so evidence of what already works is worth including.

Milestones are not a formality here. Money is released against them, progress is assessed against them every three months, and the business plan format asks you to phase your funding needs against your project milestones. Write milestones you can actually hit on the timeline the category allows: nine months for Category I, twelve for Category II.

On the incubation side, STEP's own form asks for your patent status, why you chose STEP and what you expect from it. Those are not filler questions on a form this short. Answer them with something specific to STEP — its space, its shed, its land at Gopali, its campus — rather than a general statement about incubation.

Read the grant terms before you commit. They set out that no equity is taken below a project-cost threshold and that a shareholding band applies above it, and that intellectual property from larger projects is shared with IIT Kharagpur. Those are ordinary terms for a public-institution grant, but they are terms, and you should know which band your project falls into before you name a project cost.

If a thrust area matters to your pitch

STEP's grant call lists thrust areas, and the list on its website is not the list in its most recent call document — the newer call covers considerably more ground, including climate resilience, mining and post-mining rehabilitation, water and river management, tribal development and cyber security. If your work sits outside the shorter list on the page, check the current call document before you rule yourself out.

Science and Technology Entrepreneurs' Park (STEP), IIT Kharagpur is a technology business incubator on the IIT Kharagpur campus in Kharagpur, West Bengal. It is not a department of the institute: STEP is its own registered society under the West Bengal Societies Registration Act 1961, registration number S/53558 of 1986-1987, established on 3 December 1986. It describes itself as one of the oldest incubation centres in India, and says it was set up with financial support from DST New Delhi, DST West Bengal, IDBI, IFCI and ICICI.

What they support

STEP supports technology-based startups. It sets out two goals on its home page: to promote, facilitate and undertake application-oriented research and to build techno-entrepreneurs with a science and technology background who can start technically demanding industrial ventures, and to run entrepreneurship training and workshops. There is no sector gate on incubation. The one sector STEP singles out is agriculture, because the land it holds at Gopali Village is described as suited to agro-based startups that need ground to work on.

Its own summary of what it offers is incubation, mentorship, funding and R&D facilities. Only incubation and the grant call have pages of their own, so treat the mentorship and R&D lines as a statement of intent rather than a described service: no lab, instrument, mentor or mentoring format is named anywhere on the site.

Programmes

There are two ways in, and they are separate.

Incubation is open on a rolling basis. STEP calls its incubation programme a flexible one and offers it in two modes: dry incubation, which it also calls virtual, and wet incubation, which it calls physical. Selection runs through a Committee. You send a formal application letter with the application form, a business plan in STEP's own format and the supporting documents; STEP invites you to present before the Committee; the Committee approves the application after the presentation if it finds it suitable; and then you sign the incubation agreement with STEP. STEP repeats twice that the signing is subject to the Committee approving the incubation. It publishes no incubation duration, no fee and no equity term.

The second route is a Call for Proposal for innovators and startups, which supports the work of turning an idea into a working prototype. It has two categories. Category I is for proof of concept, prototypes and models, and its projects must run no longer than nine months. Category II is for product development, where an already developed product is taken further or given added value, and its projects must run no longer than twelve months. Grant support is milestone-based: the first release follows the milestones set out in the proposal as recommended by the Review Committee, later releases follow an assessment of progress, and approved projects are reviewed every three months. The terms state that no equity is taken below a project-cost threshold, and that a shareholding band applies above it. They also state that the intellectual property generated by larger projects is shared with IIT Kharagpur.

The call is currently between intakes. The most recent call STEP has published closed in March 2025, and an older one, still linked from the proposal page, closed in October 2024 with an extension notice to November 2024. Nothing on the site announces a new window, so a founder interested in the grant should ask the STEP office when the next call opens.

Who can apply

For the grant, STEP says it is inviting proposals from individual innovators or startups from anywhere in India, and that any Indian citizen or Indian startup with an innovative idea they want to turn into a working prototype, model or process is eligible. Both categories say the same thing twice over: any student, staff or faculty innovator of IIT Kharagpur can apply, and the call is also open to any other innovator from anywhere in India. So being at IIT Kharagpur helps you find the call but is not a condition of it.

Incubation eligibility is less clear, and the site does not resolve it. The application form asks whether your startup is registered and treats only the turnover and projection questions as conditional on that, which reads as an invitation to unregistered teams. Yet every company document on the enclosure list is required: the incorporation certificate, the MoA and AoA, the company PAN, the company TAN and the trade licence, along with CVs and identity documents for all directors. In practice, expect to need an incorporated company. There is a separate enclosure for a no-objection certificate covering institute students, faculty and staff, so people inside IIT Kharagpur and outside founders apply through the same form.

Facilities

STEP holds about 20,000 sq ft of incubation space, made up of roughly 11,000 sq ft of office space and roughly 9,000 sq ft of industrial shed, so a hardware or light-manufacturing team has somewhere to put a line rather than only a desk. It lists 796 sq ft of conference space. At Gopali Village, about 3 km from the main IIT Kharagpur campus, it holds 127 acres, offered to agro-based startups that need land; STEP also grows and maintains a tea garden there, which IIT Kharagpur uses for flora and fauna research.

Track record

STEP publishes no count of startups supported, no funding figure and no cohort count. What it does publish is two lists. Nine companies appear under the heading Successful Startups: Capillary Technologies, P2Power Solutions, Ecofrost Technologies, Ants Ceramics, Tradelab Software, DataResolve Technologies, Azure Software, Agnext Technologies and Intinno Technologies. Nine more appear as current startups, among them Drishtee Foundation, Maribus Solar, SensorDrops Networks, GreenInfra Creations, Weevils Drones, Net Zero Green Bharat, Earthflow Research, Intelligo Edu and Shrishtikhetra Agro & Aqua Products. Neither list is dated.

Who runs it

STEP is led by a Managing Director, who also holds two other posts at IIT Kharagpur: principal investigator and convenor of TOCIC, and professor-in-charge of incubation and entrepreneurship at SRIC. The site names no individual, and its team page has not been built yet. Its activities page is a log of past outreach rather than a listing of things to attend, and its most recent entry is from July 2024.

How to apply and how to reach them

For incubation, fill the form on STEP's apply page or email everything to the Managing Director's office. For the grant, use the proposal form and the category format that matches your stage, or email the STEP office with a hard copy to the STEP Office at IIT Kharagpur. Documents are not uploaded — you paste a link to each one, and STEP states plainly that a link not shared publicly, or a file that is not a PDF, gets the application rejected. STEP's office is at IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, and it lists a landline on its contact page.