IIT Madras along with CII strive for 'Green'

Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology Madras and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have joined hands to collaborate and to nurture innovative green start-ups across the country.

This initiative will enable brainstorming sessions between academia and industry, to create deep-tech and disruptive research ideas and help start-ups gain industry access for pilot demonstrations of their cleantech ideas.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Gopalakrishnan from the Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (GDC), IIT Madras and CII - Sohrabji Green Business Centre (CII-Godrej GBC) to nurture and promote innovative Green Startups on 31st August 2019 at Hyderabad on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the CII - Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre.

This collaboration aims to facilitate novel research ideas and innovative ventures in the cleantech space that would be trained and mentored by the GDC at various academic institutions across India. It would also enable startups to reach out to the industry for networking and business opportunities as they seek to scale.

Mr R. Raghuttama Rao, Chief Executive Officer, GDC - IIT Madras, said, “Our experience is that the start-ups in the cleantech and green businesses form 20-25% of the disruptive ideas emanating the research labs of IITs and other institutions. The MoU with CII will enable young researchers and entrepreneurs to validate their ideas and assumptions with experienced industry veterans, thereby helping in creating more robust start-ups.”

This collaboration will help provide a platform for startups and founders of GDC-mentored teams at major events such as Green Building Congress, Energy Summits, GreenCo Summit and Green Power to network and reach out to the industry. Capacity building programmes for cleantech entrepreneurs being mentored by GDC will also be conducted, focussing on industry trends and requirements.

Highlighting the need for such initiatives, Mr Jamshyd N. Godrej, Chairman, CII- Godrej GBC, said that with the climate challenges the world is facing today, there is so much to be done, ahead of us. The need of the hour is to design and develop models, which are ecologically superior and economically viable. Green entrepreneurs and start-ups have an important role in addressing ecological issues and concerns and this MoU will facilitate the same, highlighted Mr Godrej.

The key objectives/advantages of this collaboration include:

* Enabling start-up teams in GDC’s programs from all over India to discuss their innovative ideas in the cleantech space with established industry players in their initiatives for customer discovery and business model design.

*Facilitating the engagement of start-up teams from GDC with leaders in the cleantech industry to validate prototypes, minimal viable products, and implement pilot studies as may be required in their quest for scaling up.

*Connecting established players in the Cleantech industry with young and talented entrepreneurs from the best research institutions across India and familiarising them with cutting-edge and disruptive technologies of tomorrow.