St Aloysius Incubation Centre (SAIC) Mangaluru, a unit of St Aloysius College (Autonomous), Mangaluru has a vision to encourage men and women who have innovative ideas, products, and an ardent desire to realize their dreams of creating innovative products or services for the ultimate benefit of the larger section of the society. Start-ups have a vital role to play in the future of India by creating innovative solutions to the country’s challenging issues and generating large-scale job opportunities for the upcoming workforce. SAIC helps entrepreneurs to develop their business, especially in the initial stages. Incubator support includes providing technical infrastructure and advice, initial growth funds, network and linkages, co-working spaces, lab facilities, mentoring, and advisory support. To facilitate this, the Centre has adopted an Incubation Policy to provide guidance and management structure to facilitate the development of entrepreneurship.

1. Eligibility Criteria and Admission Procedure:

Any student, staff, alumni, or persons desirous of availing incubation facilities have to apply in the prescribed format along with required documents. The prospective candidate should submit an application in the prescribed format containing the business plan and shall present the executive summary to the review committee. The committee is authorized to make comments on the technical and business feasibility of the idea and recommend it to the Centre.

2. Infrastructure and Services provided to incubates:

2.1 Mentoring and Advisory Services:

The candidates can take a faculty advisor as a mentor for startup issues. Support for research activities, legal services, and market accessibility - An incubated company can take a faculty advisor as a mentor on technology issues.

2.2 Institutional Infrastructure:

SAIC may facilitate access to the Institutional infrastructure or laboratories as per the norms of the College. The Centre offers fully furnished space to the incubators with Wi-Fi facility along with Seminar / Conference Halls.

2.3 Common Infrastructure:

SAIC provides a common pool of hard and soft infrastructure to be shared by all incubated companies. The following resources are provided: Photocopying machine, Access to the college Library: Books, Subscription to IT, Business, Management, and Trade journals and newspapers, Meeting/Conference room with Audio and projection equipment, Tele or Video conferencing facilities.

3. Tenure of Incubation:

The incubators will be permitted to utilize the incubator services for a period of two years. They may be granted a maximum of two extensions of 6 months each, at the sole discretion of the Institution. An incubated company will leave the incubator under the following circumstances:

• Completion of two year stay (if no extension granted).
• Underperformance or non-viability of business proposition as decided by Committee.
• Violation of the policy of the institution (SAIC).
• Any other reason for which SAIC may find it necessary for an incubated company to leave.

4. Periodic Assessment:

A review committee set up by SAIC will evaluate the performance of the incubatee every six months.

5. Seed Funding:

SAIC may provide seed funds subject to the availability of funds, grants, or schemes meant for this purpose. A company desirous of getting seed funds may submit an application for seed funds after three months of incubation at SAIC. The seed funds will be sanctioned based on the eligibility criteria as decided by SAIC from time to time. It would also be subject to the terms stipulated as per the Seed funding Guidelines of SAIC.

6. Business Plan Template:

The following template can be used for creating a comprehensive business plan. Though the sequence shown is not mandatory, the plan must cover all the sections listed in the template:

1. Introduction / Company overview
2. Concept / Proposition / Product description
3. Market opportunity
4. Competition survey
5. Development plan and milestones
6. Marketing plan
7. Management / Organizational chart
8. Financials
9. Risks and de-risking strategies
10. Appendix

7. Agreements:

All incubates shall enter into the following agreements with the Institution:

1. Incubation Agreement: Contains rules and other incubation norms, consideration, equity holding, etc. (Applicable to all.)
2. Seed-Fund Agreement: Contains rules of disbursement and repayment. (Applicable to incubate availing seed-fund.)