The Beautiful Minds
J Vignesh
Getting science out of laboratories and into daily lives is a
big challenge for researchers in India. The rise in startup activity has helped
ease this and a number of scientists are building new ventures. J Vignesh
explores the field
When Rudra Pratap returned to India in 1996 after a Ph.D from
Cornell University to join the Indian Institute of Science as a professor, he
was astonished to find no one working on micro-electro-mechanical systems. The
technology, which deals with making miniaturized mechanical and
electromechanical devices, was emerging as a hot area of research in the
developed world.Pratap eventually, and painstakingly, built the country's first
MEMS laboratory within the IISc with grants from Bengaluru-based Cranes
Software.
Before long, Pratap and a core group of professors decided to
build another lab for deeper research in related fields. The Centre for Nano
Science and Engineering lab, established within the IISc in 2011 at a cost of
Rs 120 crore, has more than 140 Ph.D students, published hundreds of papers,
and filed 40-50 patents. Importantly, CeNSE has incubated three startups,
including Pratap's nanotechnology startup, i2n Technologies.
If Pratap was the academician who took the entrepreneurial route
from within the IISc, Anand Chandrasekaran, cofounder of artificial
intelligence startup Mad Street Den, chose to leave the environs of an academic
setup--Ph.D at Stanford University followed by stints a scientific research
think-tanks--and use his skills as a brain researcher to solve “real world
problems.“
“We moved to India because we wanted to experiment (with real
world problems). We used Ashwini's (wife and cofounder) savings on this,“ said
Chandrasekaran. “She was the one with the savings. I was an academic, the
underpaid slave labour of the world.“
Jokes apart, these men are answers to what has been plaguing
Indian research for long--an inability to translate lab research into useful,
marketable products. “This country has been doing very well in research (but)
unfortunately, it is driven by individuals with the mindset of publishing
papers. But that's not the end goal of research. The end goal of research is to
create something useful for society,“ said Pratap. “What has prevented this
from happening is that whatever results they get, there's a much harder path of
translating that into technology that can be made useful. The chasm is too
big.“
Academics-turned-entrepreneurs have always been around but they
have been a small set of highly motivated individuals brave enough to venture
into the complex world of business-building. Now, the global buzz around
startups, a supportive government and an ecosystem that thrives on new ideas
are providing that extra thrust to encourage supposedly reclusive academics to
come out and build technologies that can better society.
“Institutes now have much better policies to enable students and
faculties to start companies,“ said Navakanta Bhat, professor at the IISc's
electrical communication engineering department and cofounder of Pathshodh, a
maker of portable diagnostics devices. Bhat is on a year's leave from the
institution. “IISc has enabled it so that I can focus on the company. Even
after that, if I continue to be with the IISc, I can put away a certain
fraction of my time to continue doing startup-related activities. That's a big
administrative interventional policy. It is very common in the US.“ In addition
to premier institutions and governments, a number of independent establishments
have emerged that nurture entrepreneurship focused on scientific research.
IKP Knowledge Park is one such. It runs a business incubator
focused on medical and life sciences startups. “We provide lab spaces. We offer
funding. In some cases, we also fund them through grants, which comes even
before seed investment. We enable the startups by giving them a peer community
to interact with and act as a sounding board.We help with intellectual property
searches. We review it, look at competitors and also work with government to
advice on policy.We also help in hiring,“ said Vikraman Venu Saranyan, chief
operating officer at IKP-EDEN, the incubator.
The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms is another one.
C-CAMP incubates life-sciences startups and helps the best ones secure
government grants. “There has to be a problem, like say, affordability,
accessibility (that a startup is looking to solve); there has to be a broad
need,“ said Taslimarif Saiyed, COO at C-CAMP. “The team has to take it to the
next level in terms of business and has to have a mechanism to test the
solution. We have roughly 15-20 researcher-led companies.“
An academician hell-bent on converting ideas into products is
akin to a magician with many a trick up his sleeve, thanks to tons of research
done over the years. Take G Jagadeesh, associate professor at IISc's department
of aerospace engineering. He is simultaneously working on various seemingly
unrelated ideas--injecting DNA into cells to aid in genetic material
manipulations; needleless drug delivery; artificial insemination in cows; and
inducing antioxidants into tea leaves. All these ideas stem from his area of
expertise: Shockwaves.These waves are associated with bodies that fly faster
than the speed of sound, thereby dissipating kinetic energy. His startup
Superwave Technologies is in advanced talks with oil companies to take their
research to the market.
“One model of entrepreneurship we want to try out is to give
intellectual capital, which is our patents and our ideas, (to partner
companies). The relevant industries are not only willing to fund this but also
come on board because this ecosystem does not exist in India to a large
extent,“ said Jagadeesh.
Pandorum Technologies has developed a 3D-printed bio-tissue that
mimics the functioning of a human liver. From starting as a two-member team
five years ago, it has now assembled a multi-functionary team. “All of us are
academic-entrepreneurs. This helps because this is a very fast-moving field and
you need to be abreast with the happenings,“ said chief executive Arun Chandru,
a Ph.D in aerospace engineering.
But all is not magic. A lot of time and effort goes into coming
up with useful technologies. It usually takes years and years of hardcore
research. “In high-tech research, for (an idea) to reach to fruition, it takes
at least two generations of Ph.D students,“ said Bhat of Pathshodh. “So, the
first generation, we had headway. I recruited one more to broaden the horizon,
to really look beyond and improvise the technology and also include more
tests.“
Similarly, Chandrasekaran of Mad Street Den experimented in
diverse areas including gaming and robotics before deciding on what to focus on
for this startup. For now, it is fashion. “For a year-and-half we were building
infrastructure and experimenting. We went around and spoke to everybody. This
propelled a lot of conversations. We spoke to investors, potential customers
and all. It was not something that happened overnight,“ he said. If ideas take
time, getting used to being an entrepreneur is another big ask for
academicians. “The amount of time you would spend on administrative job is
always a distraction, but it is something that you will have to do,“ said Dhananjay
Dendukuri, an academic turned founder of Achira Labs, a maker of microfluidics
diagnostic tools.“Being responsible to an investor, shareholder is different
from being responsible to a boss... That change is a big shift.“
Vinay Viswanathan, co-creator of the indigenous handheld
computer, Simputer, in the early 2000s, said academics can now be more
surefooted when they want to start a business, unlike earlier, and so they
should. “We had to get permission from IISc (where he was a professor) to do it,
to make provisions for these things to happen. The current set of people do not
have that problem because the mechanism is in place. It's wonderful it has
happened.“
J.Vignesh@timesgroup.com
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