NID, IIM-A in incubator deal

The National Design Business Incubator (NDBI) at the National Institute of Design (NID) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), to promote new enterprises. This will be done through collaboration in incubation, research, training, consultancy and other enterprise support.

"Such a tie-up would help NDBI incubatees with management related inputs, like setting up of distribution network, pricing policy, refinement of business plan. NDBI currently has four physical incubatees in its centre and all of them could be potential beneficiaries of this MoU," said Darlie O Koshy, chairman, NDBI.

The focus will be in areas related to innovation in product design and development. The two institutions embody complementary capabilities and the MoU seeks to exploit the synergies between managerial and design inputs in creating new enterprises. A host of activities encompassing test marketing, management and design support, and mentoring are within the purview of this MoU.

"CIIE has been trying to increase focus on incubation-related activities. Since its launch in 2001, experiments with innovator scouting and incubation have also thrown up new challenges for CIIE.

The centre has also received offers for technology licensing as well as mentoring hi-tech start ups. With such developments and more challenging assignments expected in the future, we are in process of evolving a model that would be appropriate for emerging requirements," said Rakesh Basant, chairperson, CIIE.

"The two institutes will come together through this MoU. Possiblities of offering joint incubation clinics to Gujarat engineering SMEs by NID and IIM-A was also brought up earlier," said Prashant Singh Kutaula, COO, NDBI and an IIM-A alumnus.