Deadline: Ongoing
The Social Alpha Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EiR) Fellowship Programme is a year-long immersive programme that equips passionate ‘entrepreneurs-in-the-making’ with end-to-end capacity building and resources to leverage India’s deep science, innovation, and entrepreneurship environment.
The focus areas of this initiative include financial support, strategic and business support, innovation support, and customised support.
The EiR Fellowship Programme is anchored in solving chronic and emerging problems, providing technology development support, business planning and venture building assistance, and an in-depth understanding of the social sector. The programme is designed to bring together entrepreneurs and innovators, fostering collaboration among top educational, technical, and philanthropic institutions in the world. Social Alpha promotes innovations and entrepreneurship with a mission to create large-scale sustainable social, economic, and environmental impact. The programme recognises the need for a hands-on approach to solving societal problems, attracting talented individuals looking to venture into entrepreneurship, lowering opportunity costs and entry barriers, allowing experimentation without fear of failure, and providing innovators an opportunity to market their solutions within the Social Alpha ecosystem. It is anchored in social enterprise building and immersive development sector experiences.
The EiR Fellowship supports innovators and inventors to develop solutions through their entrepreneurial ventures. Selected fellows receive financial support including a monthly stipend of INR 60,000 and the opportunity to pitch for seed funding up to INR 50 lakh. Strategic and business support is provided through masterclasses, need-based mentoring on entrepreneurial know-how, access to domain experts, mentors, entrepreneurs, and functional specialists, along with checkpoint or milestone-based progression. Innovation support includes free access to Social Alpha lab facilities for prototyping and product development, access to partner organisations for labs and scientific support, and mentoring on Design for Manufacturing by Design Alpha. Customised support provides access to the Social Alpha network for bespoke assistance from domain experts, investors, mentors, and industry leaders.
The EiR Fellowship is designed for scientific and engineering entrepreneurs in the early stages of technology development, who are dedicated to building start-ups that solve India’s development challenges. Women innovators are encouraged to apply. Student innovators from engineering, medicine, sciences, and design disciplines, researchers who have completed their PhDs or post-docs, mid-career professionals, scientists on sabbatical, serial entrepreneurs, and individuals with inter-disciplinary backgrounds committed to building their own successful company are all eligible. Prospective fellows should be deeply focused on creating businesses that target underserved populations.
The programme is a full-time immersive experience structured to accelerate the idea-to-seed investment journey. Fellows gain exposure to Social Alpha and its ecosystem, followed by prototype development and lab testing, pilot planning and design for manufacturing, field trials and certifications, and business planning leading to investor pitches. The structured huddles include identifying problem statements, establishing product-market fit, developing prototypes, and preparing for market readiness. Immersions allow fellows to gain contextual understanding of grassroots challenges and enterprise-level start-up challenges, and technology scouting helps them understand technology adoption and commercialization. The programme also includes a Business Bootcamp to equip fellows with essential business skills, iterative product development, piloting, go-to-market readiness, and a final Investor Pitch Week leading to start-up announcements and graduation.
Applications for the EiR Fellowship are open year-round, and prospective fellows are evaluated quarterly, with evaluation taking one to three months after application submission.
For more information, visit Social Alpha.
