More than 15,000 students graduate every year from various Manipal Academy of Higher Education programs and a large number of them dream of being entrepreneurs.

The Manipal Universal Technology Business Incubator (MUTBI) helps them realise their dreams; it offers support and mentoring during the first three critical years of a start-up. It also provides resources and arranges for funds from various agencies and facilitates support services like marketing, financial and legal services.

It is in synergy with our vision of providing an ecosystem for the creation of knowledge and wealth for the greater good. It has also been established with a view to boost networking among academic and R&D institutions, industries and financial institutions.

MUTBI is one of the 54 TBIs funded by the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) and Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India. It was set up in 2010 and its thrust areas are Information Technology (IT) in Healthcare, Agriculture, Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Systems, and MEMS/Nanotechnology.

Some products MUTBI has helped develop are Practice-Based Learning model for secondary schools, 3D Printers, and paper pens and pencils. Product prototypes have been developed for a low cost water generator, low cost telescope, low cost dental implants and a software for cloud enabled environment monitoring system for health system.

Incubation Program

MUTBI encourages start-ups of the Manipal Group institutions and people of the region. Based on an evaluation process carried out by the committee members, a start-up can gain admission in MUTBI for a period of 3 years.

Assistance is given to applicants in the preparation of business plans and putting together other necessary documents and the selection process consists of three rounds of presentations and discussions of the business plan and other details.

All students and alumni of Manipal Academy of Higher Education Group institutes, students of select engineering and management colleges of Karnataka are eligible for applying to MUTBI.

Support is provided for physical infrastructure like office space, personal computers and internet connectivity as well as common infrastructure like conference rooms and teleconferencing facilities.

In addition to physical and common infrastructure the company can avail other services like the network of mentors and experts. The incubator also organises events and meetings with industry leaders, to facilitate networking of companies so that they may showcase their technologies.

The incubator also facilitates access to the MIT laboratories for product development purposes.

Some start-ups that have been aided by MUTBI are:

Varada Vijay Raghav and Rohit Asil:  Fracktal Works Pvt. Ltd. (www.fracktal.in)

• Product & service offerings in rapid prototyping
• Developers of a high resolution, affordable FDM type 3D printer series
• Biomedical instrumentation developing EEG headsets for applications in the field of brain wave mapping & analysis.

Dr Kumar Siddharth and Dr Divya Mishra: Dental Innovations India™ Pvt. Ltd.

• Manufacturers of Optiqur, a Dental product for curing light activated resin based materials.

Vatsal Ambastha and Priti Ambastha: Firexit Software Pvt. Ltd.

• Video game development for web and mobile platforms.
• Porting and publishing services for multi-platform games.

Admission to MUTBI

• The prospective incubate (who wishes to start company) needs to collect a pre-application questionnaire from the MUTBI office.
• The filled pre-application questionnaire with the business plan and resume of the promoters need to be submitted to the MUTBI office.
• A committee of experts will evaluate the pre- application questionnaire.
• The recommendation of the committee will be communicated to the prospective incubate within 7 working days.
• The accepted incubate needs to fill in the MUTBI application form.
• The application is reviewed and the incubate is informed about the decision of the committee members.
• The ‘accepted incubate’ needs to sign a service agreement and equity agreement (if any).
• Once admitted to MUTBI, the incubate company is advised to register in ROC as a private limited company.
• In case the incubate requires funding, he needs to fill in the loan application form.
• The incubate needs to present a proposal to the concerned management committee. The sanction of the amount to the particular proposal will be done based on the recommendations of the management committee members.

For more information on MUTBI, visit http://www.mutbimanipal.org/Default.aspx