IIT Madras hosts great 5th annual symposium

IIT Madras Gopalakrishnan-Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (GDC) organized its Fifth Annual Symposium.

The event was held on 30 Jan 2025 on the theme of ‘Translating Research into Impact at Scale’.

Objective

The objective was to provide a key platform to discuss actionable strategies for overcoming barriers to commercialising research in India.

IIT Madras has strongly supported India’s socio-economic development through outstanding contributions to world-class education, research, technology, and innovation.

Collaboration

The GDC has collaborated with over 100 universities, research labs, and incubators across India to develop the entrepreneurial quotient of the country’s academic and scientific community by training over 1,700 researchers and entrepreneurs and nurturing over 450 deep-tech startups.

Director of IIT Madras

Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said we have been moving towards innovation and entrepreneurship in a big way.

Four-five years ago, we started the concept of ‘One Patent a day’. In the last Financial Year, we filed 386 patents, said IIT Madras director.

In the last six years, we have had just three patents rejected. Patents in Pioneering products have come from IIT Madras.

They include Agnikul’s Rocket, the world’s first with a 3D printed engine and hyperloop, a cutting-edge field in which IIT Madras is going to organize the first-ever competition in Asia, he said.

We are ensuring that these ideas are protected at least in India to start with, he said.

Research models

The day-long Symposium focused on successful translational research models with the participants sharing insights into the commercialization process, and exploring how policies and industry collaborations can be improved to scale innovations in India.

Vision for GDC

Dr. Gururaj Deshpande, Chairman, Sparta Group, said for a country to move forward, we need the mind of people getting excited when they see a problem. Entrepreneurship, which is fairly a new concept, has driven the world economy.

‘Now, things are moving faster and faster.’

We are able to see how the world has changed tremendously in our lifetime and that change is only going to accelerate. We want people who will embrace change and take the world in the right direction, he said.

Keynote address

Prof. Subra Suresh, Former Director, National Science Foundation (USA), and Independent Director – Anusandhan National Research Foundation, said, “Technology has been moving faster and faster.

While the telephone took 75 million years to reach the first 50 million users and the car 64 years, Mobile Phone took just 12 years, the Internet took only seven years, ‘WeChat’ one year with Threads needing just 4 days and 6 hours to reach 50 million consumers, he said.

Prof. Subra Suresh further said USA has remained the most dominant innovation leader in at least the second half of the 20th Century.

Some of the few factors that drove its leadership include Government funding for public education, agricultural and engineering innovation as early as in 1862, despite the country being in the middle of a Civil War at that time, he said.

This was done by President Abraham Lincoln through the Morrill Land-Grant Act, 1862. It transformed the education for the common man and elevated the quality, he said.

Nearly 2/3rd of the top 100 universities in the world now are in the US, thanks in large part to this measure, he said.

Mr. Abraham Lincoln also went on to create the National Academy of Sciences, 1863, to provide unbiased advice to the Government, he said.

In GDP

Prof Subra Suresh also said in the next few years, India is expected to surpass Germany and France in total GDP.

For that to happen, Basic Research and Discovery have to happen in India. There is a lot of catching up to do. Economic prosperity and national security depend on innovation.

The seed for innovation is fundamental research and it is best done at Universities, which have a longer horizon than industries, he said.

How to engage Industry and academia to work together to advance scientific enterprise that only benefits the country but the entire world? That is an important question, he said.

Since 1950, 268 the US Government’s National Science Foundation-supported Scientists have won the Nobel Prize, he said.

Research-driven innovations

The Symposium witnessed distinguished thought leaders including Prof. Subra Suresh, Dr. Gururaj Deshpande, Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan, and Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, speaking on how India can scale its research-driven innovations and emerge as a global leader in technology and entrepreneurship.

Panel discussion

It also featured a dynamic exchange between academicians and global corporate leaders and a panel discussion with young startup founders to foster a dialogue on the critical steps needed to accelerate the commercialization of research and drive transformative impact.

On the side-lines of the symposium, about 15 deep-tech startups from across India shared their innovations and visions for socio-economic impact.

GDC

Highlighting the work of GDC, Prof. Krishnan Balasubramanian, Institute Professor and Faculty-in-charge, GDC, IIT Madras said over the past 7 year, GDC has played a key role in transforming the mind set of faculty, researchers, scholars, and students across STEM institutions in India, while also enabling more than 150 startups that have gone to market after going through GDC programs.

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