Business Development

BUSINESS MENTORING, CAPACITY BUILDING AND SKILLING

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NIF provides business and technology mentoring to help grassroots innovators turn their ideas into viable products and successful enterprises. Mentoring covers areas such as product and technology development and refinement, business planning, market understanding, marketing and branding, intellectual property rights (IPR), government schemes and other enterprise-related areas. NIF connects innovators with experts, institutions, entrepreneurs and industry partners who provide technical and business guidance, helping innovators improve their technologies, assess market opportunities and take informed steps towards enterprise development and scale-up.

NIF also supports innovators and emerging entrepreneurs in developing the knowledge and skills required for technology adoption, enterprise creation and market engagement. Through customised mentoring sessions, workshops, training programmes and hands-on learning, NIF facilitates capacity building in areas such as product development, design improvement, marketing, financial management, intellectual property, manufacturing and other relevant areas. These efforts help innovators and rural entrepreneurs strengthen their capabilities and improve their readiness to take their technologies towards the market.

BUSINESS PROMOTION AND NETWORKING

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NIF facilitates business promotion and market linkages for grassroots innovations by connecting innovators with industries, entrepreneurs, buyers, investors, institutions and other relevant stakeholders. These linkages help create opportunities for partnerships, manufacturing, distribution, technology adoption and enterprise development.

NIF also promotes innovations through exhibitions, trade fairs, innovation showcases, business meetings and industry platforms. These efforts increase the visibility of grassroots technologies and help innovators explore new markets and business opportunities.

Some of the past business promotion and networking events NIF supported innovators participated are: India International Trade Fair (IITF), India International Science Festival (IISF), TEJOHM, Advantage Vidarbha, International Conference on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Society, Abhyudaya, ImagiNxt etc.

REGULATORY AND COMPLIANCE

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NIF helps innovators understand and address relevant regulatory, certification and compliance requirements associated with their technologies, products and business. Depending on the sector and product, this may include guidance on testing, quality standards, certifications, labelling, intellectual property and other statutory requirements.

By facilitating connections with relevant technical institutions, laboratories, experts and agencies, NIF supports innovators in navigating these requirements and improving the market readiness of their technologies.

NIF-ientreC (TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS INCUBATOR)

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NIF Incubation and Entrepreneurship Council (6. NIFientreC) is the technology business incubator, registered as Section 8 Company (not for profit) under the Companies Act 2013, hosted by National Innovation Foundation - India (NIF). It was established in the year 2015 with financial support from the Department of Science & Technology (DST) for incubation and commercialisation of technological ideas and innovations of grassroots innovators and students across the country.

NIFientreC envisages creating a comprehensive support ecosystem that provides timely and necessary aid to innovators and entrepreneurs in their endeavours. NIFientreC provides both in situ and ex situ mentoring to innovators and entrepreneurs for developing and upgrading their ideas/innovations into commercially viable technology products/processes. Further, it provides business guidance and assistance to them for creating and operating a successful business venture, enabling dissemination of technological innovation across India and outside India.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP CORNER

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NIF supports numerous grassroots innovators at different stages of innovation in transforming their ideas and technologies into viable and sustainable enterprises. A selection of promising innovations supported by NIF is featured below.

STUDENT INVOLVEMENT

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NIF involves students in several activities to support grassroots innovations and related business. The basic objective to involve students in NIF activities is to create an institutional platform where students can contribute in the process of establishing enterprises and commercialisation of innovations. By involving students, NIF could target to reach as many innovations as possible across country. At the same time, students get a real-life learning opportunity to put classroom theories into practice on live projects at virtually no cost to them. In essence, it was a win-win situation for students, institutions and NIF.

We expect students to helps us in following tasks:

• Developing a business plan
• Inputs for technical and commercial benchmarking
• Conducting market research for demand assessment
• Collecting market inputs from the originating geography of the innovation
• Scout potential licensees; entrepreneurs & generating interests among them
• Other relevant for related to supporting grassroots innovation-based enterprise and business.

We may provide the internship offer to the students. Interested students are requested to contact us by sending their CV with details of internship period, request letter from college etc.