India’s hotspot for innovation

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) wants to establish itself as one of the world’s premier technology centres.

The Bangalore-based centre is India’s equivalent of America’s MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and responsible for training more than 2,000 of the country’s top brains every year.

A wholly self-contained campus sprawling across 440 acres in Bangalore, the IISc provides full scholarships to all its students – all of whom live on campus – to ensure that they are free to focus on their studies and research.

But the institute has been slower than its US and European rivals in developing opportunities for commercial spin-offs from its more than 1,200 PhDs.

While UK and US universities such as Cambridge, Stanford and MIT have been breeding grounds for ideas that have developed into massive commercial successes, this has not been so in India.

There is certainly no shortage of potential talent: about 400,000 students graduate every year, while universities award another 2.5 million more degrees.

So far, however, little has been done to translate this mass of brainpower into commercial success stories, as Google has done in the US and Cambridge Silicon Radio in the UK.

But the IISc has been intensifying its efforts to change that.

In 1991 the institute established its Society for Innovation and Development (SID), which works in collaboration with large firms to tackle challenging problems in exchange for funding.

SID has helped companies such as Nokia, Microsoft and Intel to solve issues on topics ranging from wireless networking to supply chain optimisation and electronic procurement.

But while the centre has been a success, working with more than 160 companies on nearly 300 projects, the IISc is only beginning to investigate the possibility of building new companies out of the wide-ranging multidisciplinary research that it conducts.

‘We are just starting out,’ said Professor S Mohan, SID’s chief executive. ‘We want to motivate our young people to become entrepreneurs, not just workers.’

To do so, the institute provides selected applicants with funding, along with free office space, legal and business advice and ‘even the tea and coffee’, as they develop a proof of concept and take it to market. Third parties such as Ernst & Young also contribute, providing free advice on how to put together business plans.
Interested students must submit a proposal with their ideas to an independent committee that selects the most promising candidates. In exchange, any related patents are held in the name of both the company and IISc.

Mohan says the institute will encourage its startups to publish their research in academic journals, but will not push them if they wish to keep their intellectual property secret.

Later, if the business becomes a success, the funding can be paid back as a normal loan or converted into shares in the company, with each decision dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

But this promising process is still in its infancy: just five people have been identified for possible startup companies so far, mostly with IT-related plans. But Mohan hopes that this number will rise to 10 next year.

‘The students are very enthusiastic, but we want to go slow at first,’ he said. ‘If just two or three eventually become successful, we will be very happy.’