Lab to Market – Times of India

It is difficult to create commercial products in academia, says Prof. Prabhu Rajagopal, who heads the office of innovation and entrepreneurship at IIT Madras. “The maturity of the technology required by the market is very high and it is difficult to do it in academia because of funding and other challenges. After a while, the funding body and the student lose interest and the good work gets stalled,” he adds.
“In startups, product delivery is much faster. What takes years in a research lab can be done in a few months,” says Prof. Rajagopal. This is his motivation for starting the venture.
He is not alone. About 15% or 92 professors at IIT-M are in entrepreneurship, probably more than any other institute in the country. Tamil Nadu issues more patents than any other state, according to the Intellectual Property India Annual Report — 2022-23. Tamil Nadu also has about 17% of engineers graduating each year, more than any other state.
With the right environment, resources, talent pool, mentors, investors, an innovator can embark on an entrepreneurial journey, says Tamaswati Ghosh, CEO, IIT-M’s incubation cell. “With commercialisation, you can do a lot more to solve critical problems for the industry, and by scaling up the technology, it can have a bigger impact on society.” Innovation has to be on the business side too, not just in building a product,” he adds.
One of the advantages of deep-tech startups incubated at IIT-M is the expertise brought by faculty members and industry veterans. Ghosh says decades of industry engagement paved the way for the current ecosystem at the institute. Now, he is trying to replicate that model with “building clubs” in smaller city colleges. “This allows students to experiment. They get experience in project management and can eventually venture into entrepreneurship.”
Bridging the gap between innovation and market needs is a top priority for Vanitha Venugopal, CEO of deep-tech incubator iTNT hub. The Jigsaw-based agency has a database of 4,300 researchers and connects R&D with market requirements. The agency is planning an IP summit later this year to facilitate global technology transfers.
“Institutions should create ecosystems of collaboration and funding. Instead of just filing a patent or listing it as a research paper, they should proactively seek collaborations with industries,” says Vanitha Venugopal.
Similar efforts in technology transfer have been undertaken by Anna University as well. Its Vice-Chancellor Dr R Velraj says that there has been a significant increase in patents in the last few years. And a concerted effort is being made to commercialise them through a technology transfer office. He says that the royalties from a particular drone technology run into crores, underlining the impact of IP licensing.
Technical institutions should have an industrial park to expose students to industry trends, says Velraj. “There is a huge talent pool outside Chennai. More efforts should be made to build incubators and conduct hackathons there,” he adds.
Multinational corporations are key players in Tamil Nadu’s research landscape. An industry veteran from the state says the state’s vast pool of talented students could be tapped to bring products to market quickly; it’s not just the industry that can do that. “Tamil Nadu needs more research parks, incubators and accelerator centres around major engineering colleges,” the veteran adds.
Siva Padmanabhan, managing director of AstraZeneca India, says Chennai has emerged as a mature market that can attract talent from other parts of the country post-COVID. The Anglo-Swedish pharma company has its largest capacity centre in Chennai and is helping the parent company accelerate clinical trials and safety studies.
He says Tamil Nadu needs to develop industry clusters and create the three Es — talent that is educated, experienced and tested. “Companies need to provide opportunities for people to move into global competence centres from IT, ITES through internship programmes, building experience. To gain experience, we need to hire more people in industry-related roles. No state has figured that out, but I think Tamil Nadu can, if it picks five to six sectors that we really want to be best known for,” he adds.