History of Venture Center

Since our inception,we at Venture Center, Pune's very own vibrant innovation hub, have been helping entrepreneurs and startups to launch and build world-class technologies that impact millions of lives. Here is our growth story, from supporting 1 startup following our foundation to now to supporting 100+ startups every year in 2023.
Back in 2006, a group of innovative experts at CSIR’s National Chemical Laboratory realized the urgent need to build an open-access, collaborative innovation ecosystem that could connect the scientific expertise in the region with the entrepreneurial energies of Indian youth to produce valuable companies solving real world problems. This idea came into being in the form of Venture Center. 

Soon after the incorporation of Venture Center as Entrepreneurship Development Center, we supported our first incubatee company, and by 2010-11, we were supporting 23 startups. To support these startup journeys, the ecosystem evolved to provide space, mentors, special facilities, advisory services, financial resources and many other resources. We launched various services such as hot labs, analytical services and the library. Venture Center built a team of in-house mentors and offered intellectual property advisory service. We organized events to inspire, inform and train entrepreneurs while also creating platforms for networking.  The Venture Center team actively identified funding sources for entrepreneurs and prepared startup founders for fundraising, and we became the hub for government programs of DSIR, TIFAC, MoMSME, DST and BIRAC.

Starting 2009, the Venture Center team opened yet another front -- creating spinouts from publicly funded labs. While most incubators were supporting start-ups that already have a preliminary business plan, we were going one step further by identifying competencies in research institutions, helping put teams together around that and help arrange funding and then take it ahead as start-ups as a part of our pioneering Lab2Mkt program for creating spinout companies. So far, 11 spinout companies have emerged from NCL.
In 2011, we launched our virtual incubation program that has helped to expand our reach across the country spanning several states and cities. The year 2015 -2016 was an inflection point in our journey because that was the start of an amazing growth trajectory over the next several years and an expansion in our services offering over that time. Scientific facilities were expanded. For the first time, Venture Center decided to host advanced analytical facilities needed by startups.  Prototyping hardware products became possible with the Tinkering Lab. Today, Venture Center hosts a first rate and versatile prototyping facility, Protoshop. Venture Center has been an execution partner of BIRAC’s BIG and SIIP programs, and DST’s NIDHI-EIR, & NIDHI-PRAYAS. More recently, we have engaged with Atal Innovation Mission for their AIM-PRIME program, MeitY and the Defence Innovation Organisation. We have also generously been supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

With success comes recognition ---- Venture Center won the National Award for TBIs for 2015, the Asian (AABI) Incubator of the Year Award in 2018 and then the National Entrepreneurship Award in 2019! More recently, we have received the National Intellectual Property Award for Nurturing IP in 2023, and Venture Center’s Bioincubator was ranked the No.1 bioincubator in the country in FY 2020-21 in Biospectrum’s Annual Survey of over 40 bioincubators across the country! We were also honored to receive the Cummins Excellence Award 2022 for the Cummins- Venture Center Collaboration project to support Clean Tech Innovation & Entrepreneurship with Cummins CSR grants. 
Today, Venture Center is recognised as a NIDHI - Center of Excellence, BIRAC regional bioinnovation center, BIRAC Bionest, NIDHI EIR Implementation Partner, MeitY SAMRIDH partner, and partner for the iDEX-DIO program and we’re excited for what’s to come!  

Important Milestones (this should be represented in descending order, starting with the most recent milestones. You can decide how this needs to be represented (table, carousel etc)

Important Milestones