Ahmedabad, 11 September, 2011

Gujarat Chief Minister Shri Narendra Modi today inaugurated icreate at Gandhinagar’s Mahatma Mandir. Presented above is artist’s impression of planned icreate campus.

According to announcement today, Icreate is taking shape on a sprawling 34 acres campus on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. The building will house 100 incubates concurrently working on 40-50 projects.

The centre will house fully furnished office rooms, classrooms, a 500 seat auditorium and two seminar halls with a capacity of 100 each, conference rooms for board meeting and other meetings with 40 seat capacity, meeting rooms for brainstorming sessions, laboratories with state of the art equipments, Student IdeaLab and project rooms. The centre will also have residential facilities for employees and incubates – single and married. In addition, an executive guest house will also be constructed on campus to host invited guest speakers. This infrastructure will support various facilities such as: Library, Medical Centr, Sprawling Lawns, Cafeteria and Pantry, Indoor & Outdoor Sports Centre, Support facility for product development including tool room for prototypes, machine shop, packaging etc.

An evaluation panel chooses suitable individuals, or teams – with or without a specific business idea – that show high entrepreneurial potential. icreate then grooms them, helps them explore, select and nurture entrepreneurial ideas. Thereafter, the selected projects are incubated wherein funds and facilities are made available. Eventually, icreate will take equity in the projects beyond the incubation stage after they spin off as start-ups.
For first three months, candidates will pay fees towards grooming, in months 4 and 5 business plan will be develop for approval. Between 6-18 months, selected projects will get loans and teams will receive some sustenance. Between 5-15 years icreate will invest in the company as private equity.

Programs and initiatives under icreate include Certificate/Diplomas in Technology Entrepreneurship, establishing Incubators/Entrepreneurship Development Cells (EDC) in professional colleges and support existing ones with training, mentoring and institution building, training and Development programs for Managers of incubators and EDCs, curriculum for technology and entrepreneurship courses which can be integrated into engineering, pharmacy, biotechnology, medicine and management courses in addition to other courses at graduate and post graduate levels, developing entrepreneurship training modules for online and distance “education setups” in different Indian languages among others.

In the area of start ups, initiatives such as, a three month intense exposure to various domains of knowledge and skill sets to better prepare for entrepreneurial journey, a lab that encourages experimenting and exploring ideas, three day Non-residential programs, consultancy for start-ups, monthly technology trends seminars and entrepreneurial case study presentations are planned.

Also special workshops (Management Development Programs) targeted for potential fast growth, work with select MSMEs with potential to be fast growth, globally integrated enterprises, and monthly networking events are planned.

icreate will be guided by an advisory board led by Shri N.R.Narayana Murthy. Others in the team are Prof. Sudhir K Jain, Director IIT, Gandhinagar, MR. VS Gadhavi, Managing Director, Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation Limited, Prof N.V.Vasani, Director General of Nirma University, Prof. B.H.Jajoo, Dean, IIM, Ahmedabad, Dr. Madhukumar Mehta, Mentopreneur, Mr. Parag Amin, Inventor and a serial entrepreneur, Philadelphia, USA, Mr. K. Thyagrajan, All India Head of HR and Learning and Development, Mott MacDonald, Dr. H. Anil Kumar, Librarian and Head NICMAN, IIM Ahmedabad and Mr. M.C.Gupta, Company Secretary and Visiting Faculty at various incubators.

Focus areas of icreate are Information technology, electronics, biotechnology, nano technology, robotics, non-conventional energy – green, bio-medical equipment and devices, and agro and food processing.