IIT Bombay’s business incubator SINE is up to something big

Since its existence in 2004, the IIT Bombay’s Society for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (SINE) was only open for its students, faculty and the alumni. But now for the first time the pioneers in incubating product & IP-based startups in India, SINE will be open for all. SINE has come together with Intel India and govt’s Department of Science & Technology (DST) to launch the Collaborative Incubation Program to foster innovation and entrepreneurship for Hardware and systems Startups.

IIT Bombay’s business incubator SINE supports technology start-ups that are based on products or intellectual property and so far it has supported more than 80 starts-ups. Majority of SINE supported startups have become revenue generating, with several having reached Rs.50-100 cr. in revenue, and many start-ups have raised multiple rounds of funding.

But up until now, SINE was focused on startups from IITB only. In order to extend its expertise SINE signed in for a unique Program where academia, industry and the government have come together to support hardware and systems-based start-ups in the country. The three big forces have come together to provide mentoring, training, lab facilities, hardware kits, prototyping, business services, and funding. SINE expects that the collaboration will add a lot of strength to its startup incubation program with DST extending SINE's role to help start-ups across India and big corporation like Intel bringing in corporate expertise to give new hardware & systems companies in India a vital competitive edge.

The one year program that starts in October will support 15-20 start-ups where startups can work on-site at SINE, IIT, Bombay. Participating start-ups will be incubated through intensive training periods including one-on-one mentoring, technical support, prototyping and manufacturing support.

While software startups have taken off in a big way in the country, the hardware startups are still embroiled with lot of challenges like heavy capital investment, latency, infrastructure, commercialization, and creating scale for solutions. With this collaborative program SINE hopes to address all these gaps in the hardware and systems start-up ecosystem in the country and kick-start a new wave of startups.