Trident Academy of Technology

Choosing the right programme

• Students with a technology idea who want to build a prototype: start with the Cisco thingQbator or the IEDC scrutiny route.
• Entrepreneurs and student teams who want a registered start-up: apply to the MSME Business Incubator Cell (Trident-BI).
• Faculty and staff with an idea: the institute's policy covers you too.

How applications work

• For the MSME incubator, send a complete application form with all the supporting documents to the Trident Incubation Centre (TIC). The policy says incomplete applications will not be considered.
• Supporting documents named in the policy are the incorporation certificate or partnership deed, self-attested audited accounts and income tax returns from inception, and an undertaking signed by the founders on letterhead.
• For the IEDC, student innovative projects are first collected and scrutinised by an in-house committee before they go to the advisory board.

How selection works

• The MSME route runs in two steps: a local selection committee recommends ideas, then the MSME Final Selection Committee in New Delhi approves them on innovativeness, technology and commercial value.
• The IEDC selects a fixed number of projects each year for seed funding.
• If you are not recommended, the policy says you can reapply after changing the idea, or approach another incubator.

What reviewers look for

• Innovativeness, the technology behind the idea, and its commercial value, as the MSME committee states.
• A real-world problem and a prototype built in the institute's labs, as the startup policy describes for student ideas.

Trident Academy of Technology is a technical institute at F2/A, Chandaka Industrial Estate, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. It is approved by AICTE, Govt. of India, and affiliated to Biju Patnaik University of Technology, Odisha. The site describes the institute as a unit of Dinabandhu Foundation. Its support for student and faculty startups runs through three programmes: an MSME business incubator cell, an innovation and entrepreneurship centre sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology, and a Cisco thingQbator.

How the programmes work

The MSME Business Incubator Cell, called Trident-BI on the site, was set up in 2015 under a Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises scheme. It helps entrepreneurs and students with creative, innovative ideas of commercial value. A local selection committee drawn from industry, banks, IITs, NGOs and government assesses each idea and recommends it to the MSME Final Selection Committee in New Delhi. That committee selects projects on innovativeness, technology and commercial value, and it can grant seed funding to approved projects.

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre (IEDC) was set up in July 2013 for up to five years, with support from the Department of Science and Technology. The IEDC pages describe the centre as backing five student innovative projects every year. The site lists intakes up to the 2017-18 year and does not show a later one. Alongside the funding, the IEDC ran three-day entrepreneurship awareness camps in several departments under a DST-sponsored project, year after year from 2015-16 to 2018-19.

The Cisco thingQbator is an IoT incubation centre and student makerspace. Cisco describes the programme as part of its corporate social responsibility work, aimed at building digital skills and student entrepreneurship. Student teams get access to the makerspace, mentoring and training, and each cycle ends with a demo day. The site describes a rotating group of about 50 students joining every six months.

Who can apply

The MSME route is open to students, faculty, staff, researchers, alumni and other entrepreneurs with innovative ideas. The institute's innovation and startup policy says a start-up must be a private limited company, a one-person company, a registered partnership or a limited liability partnership. It must be no more than five years old, working on technology-driven products, processes or services, and it must stay within the turnover limit the policy sets out. Student ideas must first be built as a prototype in the institute's labs, under an assigned mentor, before they can be registered as a start-up.

The IEDC route is for students and faculty with technology-based entrepreneurship proposals. The Cisco route is for student teams with an idea they want to build as a working prototype.

Facilities

The startup policy describes a dedicated operational space for start-ups. It includes cubicles for start-ups and a lab with prototyping equipment, plus mentoring on intellectual property, marketing, business planning and product development. The page does not give the size of that space.

Intellectual property

The institute's policy says intellectual property is held jointly by the inventors and the institute when institute facilities or funding are significantly used, or when the work is part of the curriculum. The institute may license a technology to a business, and the policy lists one-time transfer fees, royalties and company shares as possible licence terms. Disputes go to a committee that includes faculty, alumni and an IP lawyer.

Who runs it

The programmes are run by institute faculty. The IEDC has an advisory board with representatives from the Department of Science and Technology, SIDBI, NABARD, research institutes in Bhubaneswar and industry. The institute's own pages describe the startup policy as aligned with the national innovation and startup policy of 2019.

Locations

All programmes are based at the institute's campus in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. The institute's contact page gives the postal code as 751024.