XLRI on Saturday announced the launching of its business incubation hub to promote and support start-ups floated by XLRI students, alumni and faculty.

Named XLRI Council for Entrepreneurship Excellence and Development (XCEED), the launch of the centre was announced by institute director Father E. Abraham while addressing the 63rd Annual Convocation at Tata Auditorium here on Saturday.

Though IIMs in Calcutta, and Ahmedabad and other B-schools have their business incubators, the one at XLRI will be funded by the alumni. The XLRI Alumni Association already have an endowment fund with a corpus of Rs 6.75 crore.

“Besides setting up a dedicated incubation facility in the institute by July, additional centres will come up on upcoming XLRI campuses in NCR, Navi Mumbai and Amravati to create a connected national start-up ecosystem,” Father Abraham said.

The centre, which the XLRI is trying to float for the past 18 months, has been registered as a separate legal entity so that it can offer grants and investment to start-ups. As of now, alumni members will be mentoring potential business ideas from the campus. XCEED will be operational to receive applications from incubatees from July.

In the past 10 years, XLRI has come up with more than 40 start-up ideas. As an independent legal entity, it will have a separate management, but will be supported by the institute.

“Incubation centres in other B-schools have got tie-ups with funding agencies, but here some alumni members have taken the lead. The corpus is also being collected by them. We will have a full-fledged in-charge of the centre from May 1 after which the selection process will be finalised,” said an employee of XLRI.

Students who graduated were overwhelmed with the announcement. “There are so many ideas when you are in a B-school. Though there is a lot of struggle, a seed funding or a technical support will encourage them to pursue their dream business ideas,” said Pravesh Jain, a student who graduated.