Evaluating University Incubation Centres to Bridge India’s Innovation Gap

Abstract

The rate of start-up failures in India can not be overlooked. More than 90 percent of startups fail in less than five years and less than 15 percent of those ideas incubated in university centres ever get to MVP. This project explores the reasons and how this can be done. The research compares university-affiliated incubation centres in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and Vadodara to comprehend the extent to which they help in nurturing early stage ventures. These 6 centres were- IIMA Ventures, iHub Gujarat, IIEC at IIT Gandhinagar, Venture Studio at Ahmedabad University, KIIF, and Amity Innovation Incubator. The team employed a mix method research design, which involved structured surveys and semi-structured interviews with managerial representatives, as well as a survey on the perception of the students from Ahmedabad University, Amity University and PDEU. The data yielded four common themes. Firstly, operational and structural constraints, such as limited access schedules, space, which directly limit the capabilities of incubators to provide founders with. Second, the majority of incubators are largely reliant on government funding programs which generate compliance based patterns that usually push out any meaningful mentorship. Third, it is hard to sustain a pipeline of high quality startups, a large fraction of applicants are not truly innovative or not market ready. Fourth, the access of mentors is not even, and financial illiteracy among student founders is a prevalent underreported issue. The student data manages to analyse the student’s perspective towards these incubation centres, by assessing their awareness and perception as the key objectives while also taking into consideration the entrepreneurial mindset of the students. Based on these results, a mock incubator is proposed as a solution, the PRAGMA Innovation Network, a hub-and-spoke incubator model which will operate in the current structural and policy environment of Gujarat.