The University of Lucknow's Incubation Cell is a place where innovation and entrepreneurship are fostered and managed. The University has a long history and a rich tradition, and the Incubation cell will draw on these insights to support entrepreneurship and assist in coordinating and promoting innovation-focused activities within the University. By offering essential assistance to help entrepreneurs advance in today's competitive market and get to a point where they can scale up their ventures further, the Incubation cell aims to support technology and knowledge-based initiatives through their start-up phase. The goal of the Incubation Cell is to create and distribute resources such as physical space and infrastructure, access to business support services, mentoring and educational programmes that will help entrepreneurs develop their talents and seed money.
Mission
Through initial cultivation of their abilities and creative ideas, ICUL seeks to create competencies among young, aspiring entrepreneurs by providing competitions and brainstorming opportunities for potential students to develop creative ideas. It also provides and offers a forum where talented aspirants' creative ideas and thoughts are nurtured and realized providing guidance across many disciplines, including operations, technical, financial, marketing, and economics, etc. ICUL serves as a support system by offering a variety of services such as networking, technical expertise, market connections, infrastructure, legal counsel and advice.
Navankur Foundation
Lucknow University has set up an innovation and technology transfer enterprise, “Navankur Foundation", as a Section-8 company, to promote innovation, incubation, entrepreneurship, and a start-up ecosystem. The company has the Vice-Chancellor as the Chairman of the Board of Directors, the Director of Incubation Cell as the Vice-Chairman along with the Registrar, Finance Officer, and other members of the Incubation Cell on the Company's Board of Directors. Section-8 is the company that is licensed under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013 (Act). It will work with the main objective of the research, social welfare, innovations, commerce, arts, science, sports, education, protection of the environment, etc. For this, no dividend is paid to the members of the company. The financial support needed to develop ideas, innovations and technologies can be obtained from various government agencies such as DST, CSIR, donations from industrial partners, and alumni.
Operating Model
With the help of specialised incubators, ICUL is prepared to act as a bridge between the academic community at the University of Lucknow and the social and industrial entities. Activities at ICUL are governed and directed by a board of directors made up of the Vice Chancellor, faculty, administrators and alumni. At the operational level, ICUL is principally in charge of fostering start-up businesses and spotting interesting pre-company opportunities. Resources from the University of Lucknow, such as the vast and active alumni network, are crucial to this process. On the other hand, ICUL is generally in command of transferring technology from the University of Lucknow, whether through IP licencing or moving the idea ahead to a commercial stage. Additionally, it is responsible for evaluating, overseeing, and starting the commercialization process for intellectual property created at the University of Lucknow.