Indian
entrepreneurship in America is old hat. But not many would risk taking their
scientific research to the next level and turning it into a successful
business. Here is moreon the story of the bravehearts who did
1 1. Shiladitya
Sengupta | 39
Assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-chair, Center for Regenerative Therapeutics, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Alumnus of All-India Institute of Medical Sciences Higher studies at University of Cambridge and MIT
Key Research
Cancer treatment
As Entrepreneur
Co-founder of Cerulean Pharma Inc in Boston, and Mitra Biotech (cancer diagnostics), Vyome Biosciences (dermatology products) and Invictus Oncology (cancer drug discovery) in India, backed by some leading VCs globally.
Vision
To bridge the academic and industry worlds through research.
While he enjoys mentoring students, also felt it critical to start companies to take the research forward into actual product development.
Wants to start innovation-driven startups in India to launch global products from India that transform the lives of patients.
Challenge as Scientist
In India it’s early-stage funding and there are few venture capitalists who have the domain expertise in science. While government funding is available, it is usually insufficient to actually build a company. The innovation ecosystem is really poor in India.
Assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-chair, Center for Regenerative Therapeutics, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Alumnus of All-India Institute of Medical Sciences Higher studies at University of Cambridge and MIT
Key Research
Cancer treatment
As Entrepreneur
Co-founder of Cerulean Pharma Inc in Boston, and Mitra Biotech (cancer diagnostics), Vyome Biosciences (dermatology products) and Invictus Oncology (cancer drug discovery) in India, backed by some leading VCs globally.
Vision
To bridge the academic and industry worlds through research.
While he enjoys mentoring students, also felt it critical to start companies to take the research forward into actual product development.
Wants to start innovation-driven startups in India to launch global products from India that transform the lives of patients.
Challenge as Scientist
In India it’s early-stage funding and there are few venture capitalists who have the domain expertise in science. While government funding is available, it is usually insufficient to actually build a company. The innovation ecosystem is really poor in India.
2 2. Sangeeta N
Bhatia | 44
PhD from MIT and MD from Harvard, professor of sciences and technology & electrical engineering and computer science, MIT
Key Research
Nano-technology to create microlivers — an innovation helping pharma companies develop safer drugs.
As Entrepreneur
In 2007, launched Hepregen Corporation, an MIT spinoff, with Bonnie Fendrock, an executive from the biotech industry. Veteran venture capitalist, Mort Collins of Battelle Ventures, put in funding in 2008. The company is working with partners to utilise and validate its platform HepatoPac. Bhatia is head of the scientific advisory board, consultant, and observer on the board. She is also co-founder of Zymera, a privately-held nanobiotech company pioneering the commercialisation of nanocrystal tech for preclinical in vivo imaging and as an analytical platform for molecular detection. In the process of starting a third company and adviser to three others started by her students — Sienna, Essentient, and another without a final name.
Vision
As a scientist, she wants her academic lab to be an innovation engine that spins out technologies into companies when they are ready to be deployed. As an Indian-American, daughter of a serial entrepreneur, she was raised with the notion that her technologies needed to be commerialised to have the broadest impact. From the day she graduated, her parents would ask “when will you start a company”.
Challenge as Scientist
Critical to have a robust connection between academics and industry. Education goes both ways and her research programme has taken tangibly different paths because of her entrepreneurial experience.
PhD from MIT and MD from Harvard, professor of sciences and technology & electrical engineering and computer science, MIT
Key Research
Nano-technology to create microlivers — an innovation helping pharma companies develop safer drugs.
As Entrepreneur
In 2007, launched Hepregen Corporation, an MIT spinoff, with Bonnie Fendrock, an executive from the biotech industry. Veteran venture capitalist, Mort Collins of Battelle Ventures, put in funding in 2008. The company is working with partners to utilise and validate its platform HepatoPac. Bhatia is head of the scientific advisory board, consultant, and observer on the board. She is also co-founder of Zymera, a privately-held nanobiotech company pioneering the commercialisation of nanocrystal tech for preclinical in vivo imaging and as an analytical platform for molecular detection. In the process of starting a third company and adviser to three others started by her students — Sienna, Essentient, and another without a final name.
Vision
As a scientist, she wants her academic lab to be an innovation engine that spins out technologies into companies when they are ready to be deployed. As an Indian-American, daughter of a serial entrepreneur, she was raised with the notion that her technologies needed to be commerialised to have the broadest impact. From the day she graduated, her parents would ask “when will you start a company”.
Challenge as Scientist
Critical to have a robust connection between academics and industry. Education goes both ways and her research programme has taken tangibly different paths because of her entrepreneurial experience.
3 3. Birendra
Raj Dutt | 60
Chairman, CEO, CTO & chief scientist, APIC Corporation Graduate from IIT (Kharagpur), 1971 PhD, experimental fluid mechanics, University of Southern California
Key Research
Breakthrough with a new technology — Fully Laser Integrated Photonics (FLIP) — which is set to replace conventional electronics in lot of computing. It will allow a new breed of microchips to be built on a commercial scale in which pulses of light, called photons, zip at top speed along nano-sized waveguides of germanium etched into silicon, instead of electrons whizzing around in copper circuits on silicon as in today's chips.
As Entrepreneur
Started Research & Development Laboratories (RDL) in Los Angeles for R&D in radar, electro-optics, image processing, artificial intelligence, and data processing in 1984.
Founded APIC Corporation in 1999 in Los Angeles for R&D and production of highly integrated photonic and electronic technology. Today his company has forged strategic relationships with a large number of universities and institutions in the US. It has a wholly owned fabrication facility in Honolulu.
APIC plans to commercially roll out the fully manufacturable prototype of the photonic chip in 18-24 months and has teamed up with the R&D fabrication facility at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University of Albany in New York.
Vision
To survive as an entrepreneur, winning research contracts is important. Taking a technology into a system is a challenge and there are times when technology may not reach fruition and the stage of commercial application.
Challenge as Scientist
A scientist-entrepreneur has a dual personality. Scientific research needs a different mindset and a breakthrough could be a very long-term process. An entrepreneur is different and has to survive on a daily basis and worry about profitability.
Chairman, CEO, CTO & chief scientist, APIC Corporation Graduate from IIT (Kharagpur), 1971 PhD, experimental fluid mechanics, University of Southern California
Key Research
Breakthrough with a new technology — Fully Laser Integrated Photonics (FLIP) — which is set to replace conventional electronics in lot of computing. It will allow a new breed of microchips to be built on a commercial scale in which pulses of light, called photons, zip at top speed along nano-sized waveguides of germanium etched into silicon, instead of electrons whizzing around in copper circuits on silicon as in today's chips.
As Entrepreneur
Started Research & Development Laboratories (RDL) in Los Angeles for R&D in radar, electro-optics, image processing, artificial intelligence, and data processing in 1984.
Founded APIC Corporation in 1999 in Los Angeles for R&D and production of highly integrated photonic and electronic technology. Today his company has forged strategic relationships with a large number of universities and institutions in the US. It has a wholly owned fabrication facility in Honolulu.
APIC plans to commercially roll out the fully manufacturable prototype of the photonic chip in 18-24 months and has teamed up with the R&D fabrication facility at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University of Albany in New York.
Vision
To survive as an entrepreneur, winning research contracts is important. Taking a technology into a system is a challenge and there are times when technology may not reach fruition and the stage of commercial application.
Challenge as Scientist
A scientist-entrepreneur has a dual personality. Scientific research needs a different mindset and a breakthrough could be a very long-term process. An entrepreneur is different and has to survive on a daily basis and worry about profitability.
4. Anant Agarwal | 53
Co-founder & chief technology officer of Tilera Corporation Professor of electrical engineering & computer science at MIT. He served as associate director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) between 1998 and 2003 BTech from IIT, Chennai & PhD from Stanford
Key Research
Computer architecture, VLSI, compilation, and software systems. He led a group that developed Sparcle, an early multithreaded microprocessor based on SPARC architecture in 1992.
As Entrepreneur
He has been a founder of several successful startups, the first of which was Virtual Machine Works Inc, with his students at MIT in 1994. The company which was started with venture funding was acquired after two years. Took leave of absence for two years from MIT in 2004 to set up Tilera Corp, which used a new chipmaking technology, the Tile multicore processor. Had earlier led a project at MIT's CSAIL lab to develop the processor. The company was founded with VC funding with Agarwal as co-founder & CTO and Devesh Garg as co-founder, president & CEO. Agarwal is still on board of Tilera and is the CTO, but he went back to MIT in 2006 and has been allowed to consult with the company once a week.
Vision
As a kid he had an entrepreneurial dream and ran a chicken farm when in high school in Mangalore. As a researcher at MIT he has realised that to take an idea to the stage where it can really help people, the last mile is the most difficult. MIT, of course, helps people to go very far with their ideas as a partner and even picks up an equity stake to incubate them.
Challenge as Scientist
To take really top-end academic research and ideas from the lab to the real world to solve real problems. The ‘aha’ moment for him comes when VCs are willing to put money in technology, even if as a professor, he knows it to be cutting edge.
Co-founder & chief technology officer of Tilera Corporation Professor of electrical engineering & computer science at MIT. He served as associate director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) between 1998 and 2003 BTech from IIT, Chennai & PhD from Stanford
Key Research
Computer architecture, VLSI, compilation, and software systems. He led a group that developed Sparcle, an early multithreaded microprocessor based on SPARC architecture in 1992.
As Entrepreneur
He has been a founder of several successful startups, the first of which was Virtual Machine Works Inc, with his students at MIT in 1994. The company which was started with venture funding was acquired after two years. Took leave of absence for two years from MIT in 2004 to set up Tilera Corp, which used a new chipmaking technology, the Tile multicore processor. Had earlier led a project at MIT's CSAIL lab to develop the processor. The company was founded with VC funding with Agarwal as co-founder & CTO and Devesh Garg as co-founder, president & CEO. Agarwal is still on board of Tilera and is the CTO, but he went back to MIT in 2006 and has been allowed to consult with the company once a week.
Vision
As a kid he had an entrepreneurial dream and ran a chicken farm when in high school in Mangalore. As a researcher at MIT he has realised that to take an idea to the stage where it can really help people, the last mile is the most difficult. MIT, of course, helps people to go very far with their ideas as a partner and even picks up an equity stake to incubate them.
Challenge as Scientist
To take really top-end academic research and ideas from the lab to the real world to solve real problems. The ‘aha’ moment for him comes when VCs are willing to put money in technology, even if as a professor, he knows it to be cutting edge.
5. Vanu G Bose | 47
President & CEO of Vanu Inc PhD from MIT in electrical engineering & computer sciences in 1999
Key Research
As a graduate student, Vanu worked on the MIT SpectrumWare project at the MIT lab for computer science, an effort to bring a software-oriented approach to wireless communication and distributed signal processing.
As Entrepreneur
In 1998, he started Vanu Inc after finishing his PhD. The company evolved out of his research on software radio and offers solutions that allow telecom networks to tune into any frequency without changing hardware or having to set up different radio transmitters for different technologies.
Vision
As the CEO, there are many different hats he wears, but the real challenge is marketing Vanu Inc’s solutions. The creativity, for him, is more in marketing rather than in inventing. He is himself involved in the marketing operations of the company hands on and now employs others for the scientific research. While his father, the legendary Amar G Bose, is not formally involved in his company, he is his son’s best friend and adviser and the two often discuss both the businesses.
Challenge as Scientist
Unlike his father’s company Bose Corp, which sells sound systems to end consumers, Vanu deals only with big wireless carriers. For a company like Vanu Inc, it is important to be good in both technology and business. For Vanu Bose, it is critical to have a robust connection between academics and industry.
President & CEO of Vanu Inc PhD from MIT in electrical engineering & computer sciences in 1999
Key Research
As a graduate student, Vanu worked on the MIT SpectrumWare project at the MIT lab for computer science, an effort to bring a software-oriented approach to wireless communication and distributed signal processing.
As Entrepreneur
In 1998, he started Vanu Inc after finishing his PhD. The company evolved out of his research on software radio and offers solutions that allow telecom networks to tune into any frequency without changing hardware or having to set up different radio transmitters for different technologies.
Vision
As the CEO, there are many different hats he wears, but the real challenge is marketing Vanu Inc’s solutions. The creativity, for him, is more in marketing rather than in inventing. He is himself involved in the marketing operations of the company hands on and now employs others for the scientific research. While his father, the legendary Amar G Bose, is not formally involved in his company, he is his son’s best friend and adviser and the two often discuss both the businesses.
Challenge as Scientist
Unlike his father’s company Bose Corp, which sells sound systems to end consumers, Vanu deals only with big wireless carriers. For a company like Vanu Inc, it is important to be good in both technology and business. For Vanu Bose, it is critical to have a robust connection between academics and industry.
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Ishani Duttagupta ET120722
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