PIEDS

Work out which door you can walk through

PIEDS runs more than twenty named schemes, and eligibility is the biggest filter, not sector or stage:

• Open to any Indian startup: the national schemes — TIDE 2.0, NIDHI-EIR, NIDHI-SSS, NIDHI PRAYAS, NIDHI Accelerator, SISFS, SAMRIDH and the SIDBI iDEX defence-tech fund — set their own terms centrally, so PIEDS is simply the local disbursing incubator.
• Restricted to BITS Pilani: the Alumni Startup Seed Fund needs a BITS Pilani alumnus founder, and the Smt. Rajkumari Jain Seed Fund for Innovation and the Mookerji Innovation Fund need at least one BITS Pilani student or alumni co-founder. Genesis is for Tier II/III city founders instead.
• Restricted by who you are: Saksham and Womenpreneur For Bharat are for women-led startups; Navonmesh Protsahan Spardha is for National Skill Training Institute students and recent alumni.
• Sector-specific, CSR-funded cohorts: Samvardhan (healthcare hardware), the Sustainability Accelerator and Susventures Climate Residency (climate), Aarogyam (digital healthcare) and IDFC FIRST Bank IGNITE (climate tech and health tech) each run their own dated cohort rather than accepting applications year-round.

How applications work

• Most schemes route through PIEDS's own Accubate application portal; some CSR-funded cohorts use a partner-provided application form instead, and IDFC FIRST Bank IGNITE uses the bank's own application system.
• Cohort-based programmes (Samvardhan, the Sustainability Accelerator, Navonmesh Protsahan Spardha, Aarogyam, Womenpreneur For Bharat) open and close a call for each round rather than accepting rolling applications — check the specific programme's page for the current window.
• The two Ideate Create pre-incubation tracks (Pilani campus and Mumbai campus) are for BITS Pilani students; applicants submit an idea brief, go through PIEDS team screening, and pitch to a selection panel before being onboarded into a cohort.

What selection looks for

• Prototype-ready and revenue potential for Samvardhan, which specifically screens for startups that already have a working prototype.
• Validated product with market traction for IDFC FIRST Bank IGNITE, which targets pre-revenue or already revenue-generating startups with a deployment-ready solution and measurable social or environmental impact, plus mandatory DPIIT registration.
• A validated problem statement with early user research for both Ideate Create tracks, rather than a finished product.
• IP ownership clarity for NIDHI PRAYAS: the applicant or team must already hold the know-how and IP for the project they want to prototype, and employees or students need a No-Objection Certificate from their organisation before applying.

Before you apply

• PIEDS does not publish desk fees, co-working tenure or general residency terms anywhere on its site — a direct query to the general PIEDS inbox is the fastest way to get a straight answer on cost and equity for a specific scheme.
• Several of PIEDS's programme pages carry funding figures and programme descriptions that were clearly copy-pasted from a different scheme's page. Treat a scheme's own dedicated page, not the one-line summary shown elsewhere on the site, as the more reliable source, and where the two disagree, ask PIEDS directly before applying.

Pilani Innovation & Entrepreneurship Development Society (PIEDS) is the Technology Business Incubator of BITS Pilani, an autonomous not-for-profit society registered in 2013 under the Rajasthan Societies Registration Act. It is based at the Rakesh Kapoor Innovation Center on the BITS Pilani campus in Pilani, Rajasthan, and also runs a separate pre-incubation track for BITS Pilani's Mumbai (off-campus) students.

What they support

PIEDS works with technology-first founders across a wide sector spread: AI/ML, IoT, blockchain, robotics, AR/VR, fintech, healthcare hardware, climate and sustainability, defence-tech and agritech. Its programmes span the full founder journey, from idea-stage students who have not yet registered a company through to revenue-generating startups scaling with grant support. A number of its larger funds are restricted by who the founder is rather than what they are building: some are open only to BITS Pilani students or alumni, others are reserved for women-led ventures, and one is aimed specifically at founders from Tier II and Tier III Indian cities.

Programmes

PIEDS runs national government schemes it is approved to disburse locally, alongside its own and CSR-funded programmes. On the government side, it hosts MeitY's TIDE 2.0 (a three-tier ladder from an entrepreneur-in-residence stipend through grants to investment for later-stage startups), MeitY's SAMRIDH accelerator, DPIIT's Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, and the DST NIDHI family — NIDHI-EIR (a fellowship paying founders directly), NIDHI Seed Support System (structured as equity), NIDHI PRAYAS (an idea-to-prototype grant for hardware) and a general NIDHI Accelerator. It also disburses a SIDBI-backed iDEX seed fund for defence-tech.

Alongside these, PIEDS runs its own named schemes: the Genesis entrepreneur-in-residence fellowship for Tier II/III founders, the Srishti hardware-prototyping fellowship, and BITS-restricted funds including the Alumni Startup Seed Fund, the Mookerji Innovation Fund (run with Silicon Road Ventures) and the Smt. Rajkumari Jain Seed Fund for Innovation. Two tracks pair mentorship with company formation for students: Ideate Create runs separately on the Pilani campus and the Mumbai campus, each a six-month, mentor-driven pre-incubation programme that PIEDS says moves 70-80% of its cohort on into full incubation.

A newer set of programmes is co-designed with corporate and CSR partners. Samvardhan is a six-month, design-focused accelerator for medical-device hardware startups, run with Studio Carbon and funded by Birla Carbon and the Aditya Birla Capital Foundation; PIEDS and Studio Carbon each take 1% equity per funded startup. The Sustainability Accelerator, co-designed with SusMafia, is a similar six-month format for climate and sustainability startups. The Susventures Climate Residency is shorter and more unusual: a one-month, in-person residency where a small cohort of climate founders live together in a shared villa in Bangalore. The Aarogyam Digital Healthcare Accelerator is a four-month cohort for digital-health startups that ends in a demo day, with grants for the top three teams. Navonmesh Protsahan Spardha, run with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, is a business-plan competition that funnels students from National Skill Training Institutes through pre-incubation and incubation rounds to a final jury. Saksham and Womenpreneur For Bharat both support women-led startups, the latter now in its fourth recurring edition. The IDFC FIRST Bank IGNITE accelerator, PIEDS's newest corporate-backed programme, targets revenue-generating climate-tech and health-tech startups with a structured, multi-phase acceleration format and grant support, plus up to twelve months of support after the programme ends.

Facilities and support

PIEDS's labs are built for hardware and software development rather than biology. The RKIC IoT Lab is equipped with microcontrollers, sensors, communication modules and embedded development platforms for building connected devices. The NIDHI PRAYAS Fabrication Lab pairs directly with the PRAYAS grant, giving funded founders fabrication equipment and electronics workstations to iterate on prototypes. The Kiran S Bhat Computer Graphics and Computer Vision Lab offers high-performance computing for image processing, computer vision and machine-learning work. RKIC also holds meeting and conference rooms of varying sizes, from a 10-person board room to a 48-person conference room, each equipped for video conferencing.

Beyond labs, PIEDS says it helps startups navigate and apply for government grants and schemes, connects them with its mentor network, and facilitates networking, investor access and pitch opportunities. Several individual programme pages describe direct, hands-on support: for example, PIEDS has connected NIDHI-EIR founders with lab access and technical experts at BITS Hyderabad, and Sustainability Accelerator founders with senior executives at UltraTech Cement for technical guidance.

Track record

PIEDS's own pages state more than 400 startups supported and a mentor network of more than 150 people, alongside a claim of 12 or more active programmes and 122 or more cumulative startup programmes run. Several individual schemes carry their own published outcome numbers: the NIDHI-EIR fellowship reports 11 startups supported, 67 jobs created and 3 patents filed from one completed cohort; the Samvardhan design accelerator reports 8 startups across two cohorts, more than 30 jobs and 2 patents filed with 6 more in process; and the Sustainability Accelerator reports 5 startups that between them raised further follow-on capital after the programme. Named portfolio companies with their own descriptions on PIEDS's site include Nawgati, a fuel-tech startup that built a consumer app and a station-monitoring platform for CNG and fuel stations; Cautio, which builds an AI-powered dash-cam and operating system for fleet safety; and Nexus India, which makes rechargeable batteries from crop residue.

How to apply

There is no single, unified PIEDS application. Each scheme has its own apply link, most commonly hosted on PIEDS's own Accubate application portal, with some cohorts instead using a partner's own application system, as with the IDFC FIRST Bank IGNITE accelerator. Programmes with an open call publish their own eligibility criteria and deadline on their individual page; several, including some of the largest available cheques, are explicitly restricted to BITS Pilani students or alumni, so a founder's first step is working out which of PIEDS's programmes their affiliation, sector and stage actually qualify them for.