IIT Delhi gets more funds for start-ups

To promote the spirit of entrepreneurship among young engineers and scientists, the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, has spruced up its funds for the Technology Business Incubation Unit.

The department of technology of the ministry of information and communication technology has sanctioned Rs 80 lakh (Rs 8 million) over a two-year period to support seed funding of start-up ventures in information technology and IT enabled services.

The department of science and technology has also sanctioned Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million) to support incubatee start-ups. Also, the Technology Business Incubation Unit has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indian arm of Beacon Ventureast Global Fund to support start-ups with either or both seed capital and venture capital.

The Technology Business Incubation Unit was put in place in June 2000 by IIT Delhi under the administration of Foundation of Innovation and Technology Transfer and provides infrastructure on campus for a limited duration to facilitate research and development to convert nascent technological ideas into commercial entities.

"Nearly 700 projects are completed every year of which 5-10 potentially commercialisable ideas are identified which are financed by Foundation of Innovation and Technology Transfer or from proposed Dedicated Incubation Fund. About Rs 550,000 is assigned for each project," Dr A K Sengupta, managing director, Foundation of Innovation and Technology Transfer said.

As of now, the programme is opened to new entrepreneurs including faculty, students, alumni and scientists, start-ups and corporate research units.

"The Foundation of Innovation and Technology Transfer provides support services like seed funding, which is about Rs 15 lakh. Infrastructural support in terms of labs and materials and fellowship programmes like 'Entrepreneur in Residence Fellowship' are also provided to aspiring entreprenuers. The new entities pay nearly Rs 100,000 for registering," Dr Sengupta said.

At present, there are four resident incubatee units including two faculty-student led companies.

Krtikal Solutions was started in September 2002 and works on embedded systems, adhoc networks and computre vision.

VirtualWire Technologies was started in July 2003, which focusses on wireless applications, DSP and cryptography. SofBlue India is working on developing blue-tooth enabled energy metres. Besides, there are three more start-ups, which will soon become effective.