Investor Profile: GUSEC

GUSEC — the Gujarat University Startup and Entrepreneurship Council (gusec.edu.in) is a Section 8 company under Gujarat University, incorporated on 6 February 2017. At founding it described itself as the country's only zero-day, zero-cost start-up support system: any innovator, including students, could walk in and get support without paying for it.

Grants and backing

GUSEC is a sector-agnostic technology business incubator and an Atal Incubation Centre. Its programme funding includes a ~₹14.5 crore grant from DST-NIDHI (approved 2017) and a ~₹9.5 crore grant from NITI Aayog for the Atal Incubation Centre (2018), focused on social-sector innovations — making Gujarat University, by GUSEC's own account, the first organisation in India to host centrally-funded incubators from both DST and NITI Aayog. It reports 100+ innovative start-ups on campus and implements the university's mandate under Gujarat's Student Startup and Innovation Policy (SSIP).

Flagship programmes

herSTART is GUSEC's women-entrepreneurship flagship — bootcamps, accelerator, demo days, mentorship, incubation and funding, launched nationally by the Hon'ble President of India in 2022. Its XR Accelerator (gusec.edu.in/xr/accelerator), run and managed by GUSEC as part of the Meta × MeitY Startup Hub XR Startup Program, takes 10 early-stage XR start-ups through a six-month programme with a grant of ₹20,00,000 plus mentorship and investor-network access; named participants include Plutomen Technologies, Xarwin Technologies, Simutomy Medtech, Reprosci Biosciences and Scholarlab Innovations. It also runs the Vikram Sarabhai Children Innovation Centre with UNICEF for young innovators.

Partners

Partners named on its site include UNICEF, Meta, MeitY Startup Hub, DST-NIDHI, NITI Aayog, GVFL, TiE Ahmedabad, the Wadhwani Foundation, CII and the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation.

herSTART's prize architecture shows how GUSEC blends recognition with practical help: reported awards include a ₹4 lakh prize plus patent-filing support for the winner, with spotlighted founders such as Nikita Lalwani (Crooze), Shikha Shah (Altmat) and the team behind LymbEdge. Incubated founders highlight access to state-of-the-art research and fab labs — Altmat's team has cited the labs as central to its materials R&D — alongside mentorship networks and co-working seats, all at zero cost.

Beyond herSTART and the XR Accelerator, GUSEC runs the Vikram Sarabhai Children Innovation Centre (VSCIC) with UNICEF for young innovators and the Institute of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Skills (IIES) for entrepreneurship education — a pipeline that starts before college and runs through to investor demo days.