Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala Director IITMRP
In the 1950s the Government of India set up five IITs with the aim of making them cornerstones in building the industrial, scientific and technological edifice of the nation. Did we fulfil this original mission? No. We are still importing every technology.
Many of us, the faculty at IIT, felt that enough is not done and we need a lot more industry-academia collaboration. That resulted in the launch of the IIT Madras Research Park and Incubation Center with the goal of creating collaboration between innovation and entrepreneurship to address industry challenges.
250 startups in 10 years…
To help startups, we should also be like a startup. Apart from the Rs 100 crore grant we got, we borrowed around Rs 400 crore from banks to build this whole campus. This place is not for mere real estate; the company that comes here must do R&D. In fact, we created a system that for every 1000 square feet hired, the company must do 150 credits every year. Otherwise, they have to move out. This helped develop industry-academia interaction. At the same time we set up an incubation center and have created 250 startups in 10 years, a unique record. 85 per cent of our companies are doing well; they are valued Rs 30,000 crore.
Vision for the future
The success of this initiative is that we are independent with a strong board. But what we will do for the next ten years? We have set ourselves a few goals, the first being to take 30 to 50 products developed from R&D done in India to scale and commercialisation.
To continue with our incubation model, we have tied up with 10 institutions in Tier 2 and 3 cities. The excitement created helps the students to understand that entrepreneurship is a career option. Even if 5 – 10 per cent of these are interested, we encourage them to build things that imparts more knowledge than lecture sessions. At the same time, it is necessary to teach them to treat success and failure same.
Two young graduates who worked in my lab, tried with a start up in medical technology. After several failures, one day, they were ready. Through the research park we incubated them and also bought 400 shares for Rs 4000. A month back, I got a mail stating that they were in the fourth round of investment and the early investors were asked to retire. They wanted us to buy back the shares and for the Rs 4000 invested, they would give back Rs 1417.6 lakh! It was a pleasant shock. This is what entrepreneurs can do. They create value. We stress the startups to be compliant and do everything right. The first lesson we teach startups is to get up again and again after every fall.
Create world class engineers…
A million engineers are graduating but if we look at the Indian industry, the best people recruited are not the best in the world. We employ around 1500 and this number is expected to increase to 2500. We are working to make 500 of them the world’s best engineers – at the top 2 per cent. We will motivate, reignite their dreams, give them challenging environment and let them become the top 2 per cent engineers of the world. If we do this, others will also follow and our industry will be full of top-class engineers.
Create 5 sectors that produce world class products…
There are very few areas where India is amongst the world’s best. We are trying to become the world best in five areas, the first being carbon neutral. It is such an important problem for the whole world, for India, particularly the poorest.
The second area is assistive technology for people with disabilities. With a large number of engineers, we can employ 50,000 to build devices for the handicapped, not just for India but for the world.
The third is financial technology. 85 per cent of India’s household has income less than Rs 25,000 per month. Therefore, we defined FinTech for inclusion. Some of the best FinTech for inclusion work is going on at the IIT Madras Research Park.
Many people say that things cannot be done, but things get done when we believe in it and do whatever possible to get there. It doesn’t matter even if you fail when the goal is for the society and for the nation. As said in Bhagavad Gita, do your task and then we have our own karmas.
