Industry Institute Partnership Cell
Incubation Support:
Pre-incubation & Incubation support will be offered to the start-ups by students and faculty for a period of one year initially which can be further extended if necessary.
Academic Support for Students and Faculty Entrepreneurs:
Students will be provided with a provision to establish their startups with the support of entrepreneurship cell available in the institute. They will be mentored in such a way that an ample time will be allotted without altering the regular curriculum. There will be acommittee constituted by the institution for review of start up by students, and based on its report, Student entrepreneurs may be considered for giving appropriate credits for academics. Faculties are also encouraged to actively start their ventures and are allowed to work from the institute and take the advantage of the NISP which accordingly will mapped to academics. The seniority and other academic benefits during this period may be availed by the faculty. They can also utilize all available resources within the institute to establish start up.
Accommodation:
Accommodation will be provided within the campus to the student and faculty entrepreneurs for a specific period of time for working towards the development of startup.
Institutional Infrastructure:
Pre-Incubation/Incubation facility ofMRECW would be accessible 24x7 to students, staff and faculty of all disciplines and departments across the institution. The equipment and infrastructure of the institution can also be availed and utilized by the entrepreneurs without disturbing the regular academics. The institute would also offer mentoring and other relevant services through Pre-incubation/Incubation units in-return for fees, equity sharing and (or) zero payment basis. The modalities regarding Equity Sharing in Startups supported through these units will depend upon the nature of services offered.
Mentoring:
The institution will support the startups by providing external mentors based on the needs of student and faculty entrepreneurs. Mentors are identified from core industry and other government organizations through proper agreement for the support of entrepreneurs. The institution will consider giving all arrangements for the mentors during their visit to startups. International exchange programs, internships, engaging the international faculties in teaching and research are also promoted.Importance of innovation and entrepreneurial agenda would be promoted and highlighted at institutional programs such as conferences, convocations, workshops,etc.
Financial Assistance:
- The institution will provide an Investment depending on the slab and available fund of the total annual budget for the in the entrepreneurial activities and supporting innovation and startups related activities.
- Institution will also seek fund from external funding through government (state and central) such as DST,DBT, MHRD, AICTE, TDB, TIFAC, DSIR, CSIR, BIRAC, NSTEDB, NRDC, Startup India,Invest India, MeitY, MSDE, MSME, etc. and other non-government agencies.
- Private and corporate sectors will be also approached to generate funds, under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as per Section 135 of the Company Act 2013.
- Funding will be raised through sponsorships and donations. Alumni network for promoting Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) will be also encouraged
Nurturing Innovations and Startups:
- MRECW will allow licensing of IPR from institute to start up. Ideally students and faculty members intending to initiate a startup based on the technology developed or co-developed by them or the technology owned by the institute, should be allowed to take a license on the said technology on easy term, either in terms of equity in the venture and/ or license fees and/ or royalty to obviate the early stage financial burden.
- Students who are under incubation, while studying would be allowed to use institute address to register their company, with due permission from the institution.
- Special Training and sensitization programmes will be arranged for women entrepreneurs and priority will be also given for them.
- Facilitation is made in a variety of areas including technology development, ideation, creativity,design thinking, fund raising, financial management, cash-flow management, new ventureplanning, business development, product development, social entrepreneurship, productcosting,marketing, brand-development, human resource management as well as law andregulations impacting a business.
- MRECW would also link the startups to other seed-fund providers/ angel funds/ venture fundsor itself may set up seed-fund once the incubation activities mature.
- In return of the services and facilities, institute will be taking 2% to 9.5% equity/ stake in the startup/ company, based on brand used, faculty contribution, support provided and use of institute’s IPR. The institute will normally take much lower equity share, unless its full-time faculty/ staff have substantial shares. Other factors for consideration should be space, infrastructure, mentorship support, seedfunds,support for accounts, legal, patents etc.
- For staff and faculty, institute would take no-more than 20% of shares that staff / faculty takeswhile drawing full salary from the institution; however, this share will be within the 9.5%cap of company shares, listed above.
- No restriction on shares that faculty can take, as long as they do not spend more than 20% of office time on the startup in advisory or consultative role and do not compromise with their existing academic and administrative work / duties. In case the faculty/ staff holds the executive or managerial position for more than three months in a startup, then they willgo on sabbatical/ leave without pay/ earned leave.
- The institute would also provide services based on mixture of equity, fee-based and/ or zero payment model. So, a startup may choose to avail only the support, not seed funding, by the institute on rental basis.
- MRECW would also extend this startup facility to alumni of the institute as well as outsiders.
- Participation in startup related activities needs to be considered as a legitimate activity of faculty in addition to teaching, R&D projects, industrial consultancy and management duties and must be considered while evaluating the annual performance of the faculty. Every faculty may be encouraged to mentor at least one startup.
- Product development and commercialization as well as participating and nurturing of startups would now be added to a bucket of faculty-duties and each faculty would choose a mix and match of these activities and then respective faculty are evaluated accordingly for their performance.
Entrepreneurship Development:
- Student clubs/ bodies/ departments would be created for organizing competitions, bootcamps,workshops, awards, etc. These bodies should be involved in institutional strategy planning to ensure enhancement of the student's thinking and responding ability.
- MRECW will give an 'YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR AWARD' to recognize outstanding ideas, successful enterprises and contributors for promoting innovation and enterprises ecosystem within the institute.
- For creating awareness among the students, case studies on business failure and real-life experience reports by startups will be included in the teaching methods
- Failures would to be elaborately discussed and debated to imbibe that failure is a part of life, thus helping in reducing the social stigma associated with it.
- Innovation champions should be nominated from within the students/ faculty/ staff for each department/ stream of study
- It has been planned to conduct an induction program about the importance of innovation and entrepreneurshipin the beginning of every academic session, so that freshly inducted students are made aware about the entrepreneurial agenda of the institute and available support systems. Curriculum for the entrepreneurship education should be continuously updated based on entrepreneurship research outcomes. This should also include case studies on failures.
- Industry linkages would be leveraged for conducting research and survey on trends in technology, research, innovation, and market intelligence.
Establishing global connectivity:
- The startups will be supported to partner with International Governments and global networks to promote exchange programmes.
- Startup Summits will be organized to showcase startups and business innovations of student and faculty and to provide a platform to stakeholders for collaboration in the startup ecosystem. Innovation awards for high growth startups and stakeholders making outstanding contribution to the startup ecosystem.
- Regional level innovation contests/hackathons/Grand Challenges will be organized and financially supported.
Implementation:
- The experts committee formulated for Innovation and Start-up Policy will implement the actions and review the progress of the startups frequently.