“AIC-SEED Plan Entrepreneurship” Incubation Program (India)

AIC IISER Pune SEED Foundation a.k.a. AIC-SEED is a technology business incubator, promoted by IISER Pune and supported by the Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, Govt. of India. AIC-SEED’s vision is to nurture science and innovation driven entrepreneurship in a research and academic environment. AIC-SEED supports, invests, stimulates and encourages the growth of deep science-based startups.

Plan-E is AIC-SEED’s flagship program, aimed at supporting transition of PhD research projects into entrepreneurial ventures. Plan-E allows PhD research scholars and the research guide, to translate their lab research to commercial products/technologies while receiving entrepreneurial knowledge, mentorship, funding, and incubation support from AIC-SEED and its ecosystem partners. The goal is to provide an alternate career opportunity to interested researchers.

Themes

• The ideas submitted under the AIC-SEED PLAN-E program must be a spinoff of the team’s PhD thesis and have the potential to translate into commercial products/technologies.
• Relevant themes (please note this is an indicative list and not exhaustive. While STEM and allied disciplines are preferred, other themes may also be considered, if a case for potential unmet market need or social impact is justified):
  • Healthcare,
  • Medical Devices,
  • Pharmaceuticals and drug formulations,
  • Industrial Biotechnology
  • Agriculture
  • Sustainability
  • Clean Energy
  • Materials
  • Computation (AI/ML)
  • Environment

What you will get?

• Selected teams, who have qualified in Round 2, will be supported with financial assistance of upto Rs 10 lakhs, out of which 50% will be against an equity stake (in the range of 5% to 10%). The funds will be disbursed in two tranches as follows:
  • At the time of company incorporation, finalization of Shareholders Agreement (SHA) and mutually agreed milestones
  • Final tranche on milestone completion with presentation/submission of project deliverables
• Maximum of 30% of project cost can be considered towards capital expenditure.
• About 30% of project cost can be considered for manpower/salary head with a cap of INR 50,000 per month per head.
• Neither of the founders (research scholar and guide) can draw salary from the funds.

What is not supported?

• Basic/exploratory research projects with no market potential or social impact
• Projects having low element of novelty
• Note: This is not a research fellowship and cannot be used to support lab or any other academic research activities, which are not related to the startup proposal.

Eligibility Criteria

• Team
  • Eligible team includes 2 or 3 members from an Indian university/institute, and will comprise of:
    • Phd Scholar (compulsory member),
    • Research Guide (compulsory member),
    • A student/research assistant/PhD scholar/postdoc/external expert (optional member)
• Project leader
  • Either the PhD research scholar or the research guide may be the leader of the startup project and act as the primary applicant.
• The team must not have been incorporated as a business entity at the time of application for AIC-SEED Plan-E.
• In case, the team has already incorporated a business entity, it should not be older than one (1) year as on the date of application.
• Additionally, in case, the team has already incorporated a business entity, it should not have received a financial support of Rs 5 lakhs or more under any central or state government scheme.
• The applicant team has to submit the following documents as part of the application form:
  • No Objection Certificate (NOC) (as per sample format) from competent authority of the institute
  • Undertaking from team members (as per sample format)
  • Scanned copy of submitted and approved PhD proposal.

For more information, visit AIC-SEED.