IIT Roorkee launches incubation centre in Greater Noida

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee launched a Technology Innovation and Development of Entrepreneurship Support (TIDES) business incubator at Greater Noida on Friday.

The Noida campus is an extension of the existing TIDES incubator at Roorkee, and will ensure that start-ups incubated in the Roorkee campus benefit from the start-up ecosystem of the National Capital Region (NCR) which would offer them more opportunities to grow and connect with mentors, investors and established companies in their technology sector, according to a press release.

The Greater Noida Extension Centre (GNEC) will initially offer incubation to three start-ups, with 15 incubatee team members working and staying in GNEC. The incubator plans to increase the capacity to spawn more entrepreneurs at IIT Roorkee.

The incubator is supported by the Startup India programme and was granted funding of Rs 12 crore through the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB).

TIDES was established by the Technology Incubation and Entrepreneurship Development Society (TIEDS) and IIT Roorkee to support innovation and entrepreneurship.

Since its inception three years ago, it has interacted with close to 100 start-ups and over 20 start-ups have been offered incubation support, with a cumulative seed funding of Rs 1.2 crore, creating over 100 job opportunities. A total of 10 patents have been filed and three technologies have been commercialised, the release stated.

Current students incubated in IIT Roorkee, on completion of their courses, will have the option to work in the Greater Noida Campus to scale up their operations and explore market possibilities. They can also work from the Greater Noida Campus during their vacations and conduct customer meetings and interactions with potential investors. Moreover, TIDES will also receive proposals from start-ups founded by IIT Roorkee alumni, who are keen to work from the Delhi-NCR region.