From Lab to Market – Times of India

It is difficult to build commercial products in an academic setting, says Prof Prabhu Rajagopal, who heads the office of innovation and entrepreneurship at IIT Madras. “The maturity of the technology that the market needs is very high and it is difficult to do that in an academic setting because of funding and other challenges. After a point, the funding body and the student lose interest and good developments get stranded,” he adds.

“In startups, the product delivery is much faster. What takes years in a research lab can be done in a few months,” says Prof Rajagopal. That is his motivation to start his venture.

He’s not alone. About 15%, or 92, IIT-M professors are into entrepreneurship, probably more than at any other institution in the country. Tamil Nadu produces more patents than any other state, according to the Intellectual Property India Annual Report — 2022-23. Tamil Nadu also has about 17% of the engineering graduates each year, more than any other state.

With the right environment, resources, talent pool, mentors, investors, the innovator can embark on an entrepreneurial journey, says Tamaswati Ghosh, CEO of IIT-M incubation cell. “With commercialization, you can do much more to solve critical problems for the industry and by scaling up the technology, it can have a greater societal impact. Innovation has to be on the business side too, not just in building products,” she adds.

One of the advantages of IIT-M-incubated deep-tech startups is the expertise brought in by faculty and industry veterans. Ghosh says decades of industry collaboration paved the way for the current ecosystem at the institute. Now it’s trying to replicate that model with “build clubs” in smaller city colleges. “This allows students to experiment. They get experience in project management and can eventually go 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 agency, with its Jigsaw platform, has a database of 4,300 researchers and connects R&D with market needs. The agency is planning an IP conclave at the end of the year to facilitate technology transfer on a global level.

“Institutions should create collaborative ecosystems and funding. Instead of just filing a patent or presenting it as a research paper, they should proactively seek collaboration with industries,” says Vanitha Venugopal.

Similar tech transfer efforts have been taken up by Anna University too. Vice Chancellor Dr R Velraj says the number of patents has increased significantly in the last few years. And there are concerted efforts to commercialise them through the tech transfer office. He says royalties from a particular drone technology run into crores, highlighting the impact of IP licensing.

Engineering institutes should have an industrial park to expose students to industry trends, says Velraj. “There is a huge talent pool available outside Chennai. More efforts should be made to build incubation and hold hackathons there,” he adds.

Multinationals are making a significant contribution to Tamil Nadu’s research landscape. A veteran industry official from the state says that the state’s vast pool of student talent can be tapped to bring products to market quickly; this is not possible by industries alone. “Tamil Nadu needs more research parks, incubation and acceleration centres around major engineering colleges,” the veteran adds.

Siva Padmanabhan, managing director of AstraZeneca India, says Chennai has become a mature market that can attract talent from other parts of the country post-COVID. The Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company has its largest capacity centre in Chennai, helping the parent company accelerate clinical trials and safety studies.

He says Tamil Nadu needs to develop sector-specific clusters and create three Es — skilled, experienced and experienced talent. “Companies need to provide opportunities for people to move to global capacity centres from the IT and ITES industries through internship programmes and experience building. For experience, we need to get more people into sector-relevant roles. No state has cracked this, but I think Tamil Nadu can do it if it picks five to six sectors that we really want to be best known for,” he adds.