Industry-funded projects at IIT Madras rise 20%

Institute says will incubate 20 new startups every year

Industry-funded projects at IIT Madras rose 20% to Rs 64 crore in 2014-15.

Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director, IIT Madras in his convocation speech said IIT Madras said the institute will incubate atleast 20 new companies on an average every year.

The institute earned Rs 97 lakh from technology transfer fees and royalties during 2014-15. Meanwhile, the Intellectual Property Management Cell enabled filing of around 80 patents during the year.

The research fund of Rs 50 crore, created last year, was used to fund seven R&D Awards (amounting to Rs 1.9 crore), five research scholar innovation projects (for a total of Rs 25 lakh), twenty-two exploratory research projects with ideas (Rs 2 crore in all) and two multidisciplinary team projects that establish a new line of research with potential to lead to the creation of new Research Centres (for Rs 3.98 crore) this year, he added.

Ramamurthi said the Phase II of the IIT-M Research Park (IITMRP) will be ready for occupation by the end of this year.

Saint Gobain Research India (SGRI), the anchor client for Phase II has taken over 1.2 lakh sq ft area that spreads across four floors in one of the blocks. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)-Logistics, Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre (HTIC), Biosciences Incubator (BI), and IIT Alumni Industry Interaction Centre (IAIIC) have also been allotted space that already covers nearly 25% of Phase II.

To boost incubation activities, IITMRP has allocated 100,000 sq ft space in Phase II.

Till date, 89 startup companies have been incubated at IITM, of which 29 were set up in 2014-15. Several of them are working in advanced and emerging areas such as IoT (machine-to-machine), clean energy, water, biomedical devices/healthcare, education, agri-tech and ICT.