DTM E44. Building India's foremost deep tech startup hub - IIT Madras Incubation Cell
From the Deep Tech Musings podcast - Get first hand insights on how to go from idea to traction in the deep tech space.
Listen now on - Spotify, Apple, Google
Padma Shree Ashok Jhunjhunwala is the founder and president of IIT Madras (IITM) Research Park & Incubation Cell (IC), one of India’s foremost Deep Tech startup hubs. As of recording, IITM IC has incubated 280+ startups generating Rs 1620+cr revenue at a valuation of Rs 33000cr (US 4.1B), and it’s ever-growing. Some of its marquee startups are Ather, Uniphore, Stellapps, MediBuddy, and many more. Prof Ashok is a strong proponent of entrepreneurship and has motivated & guided 1000s of students & young entrepreneurs over the years towards the same. He was also the former principal advisor to the Ministry of Power, Govt. of India.
In this episode, Dr. Ashok takes us back to the India of the 90s to highlight how some trends that motivated him toward the entrepreneurial ecosystem. He talks about inspiring other entrepreneurs not just to believe but also to act on the power of ideas by building things. He highlights the DNA of IITM IC and how it’s a startup in its own right. He opines on the future of the deep tech industry and shares his advice for entrepreneurs just starting out. With his wealth of experience comes a treasure trove of insights. Surely not to be missed.
Listen now on - Spotify, Apple, Google
In this episode we discuss:
[00:01:39] How has India's entrepreneurship and startup scene changed from the 1980s and 1990s to the present day?
[00:12:43] How does Dr. Ashok define deep tech?
[00:14:30] What makes IITM Incubation Cell an ideal place for a deep tech startup?
[00:20:33] How does Incubation Cell help someone grow once they are accepted into the system?
[00:23:28] Some marquee startups to come out of IITM Incubation Cell
[00:25:10] Opinions on some of the initiatives that the ITM Incubation Cell is planning for the future.
[00:26:40] What does Dr. Ashok think about the general prospects of the deep tech industry?
[00:27:05] What are some of the future trends he sees?
[00:29:27] Dr. Ashok's top three pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs just starting out
— Where to find us:
Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Founder President IITM RP & IC - Wikipedia
Reema Saha, Head of Sales & Marketing, IITM RP & IC - LinkedIn
Pronojit Saha, DTM Podcast - pronojitsaha (LinkedIn), @pronojits (Twitter)
— Where to find IITM Incubation Cell & Research Park:
LinkedIn – IITM-Incubation Cell, IITM Research Park
Facebook – IITMadras Incubation, IITMadras Research Park
Twitter @iitm_respark
Web – incubation.iitm.ac.in, respark.iitm.ac.in
Transcript (generated by AI, so please bear some typos and malformed words)
Pronojit
Hello sir, and welcome to this podcast. I'm extremely honored to have with you US today. On behalf of all the listeners, I want to extend a warm welcome to you.
DR. ASHOK
Go ahead, start question right.
Pronojit
So sir, I want to first of all understand your journey and you have been a very strong proponent of entrepreneurship. So I want to start our discussion there and travel back in time with you maybe to the here your viewpoint. How has the entrepreneurship and startup landscape in India evolved from the current decades?
DR. ASHOK
I had returned to India and joined IIT McGrath in 1981.
Pronojit
Okay.
DR. ASHOK
I was in US before that. My objective was to somehow transform India and make it a relatively developed country. And earlier I thought that politics is the way to go about making the change very soon. Within a year or so of my returning here and spending a lot of time at different places in the country, I realized that politics is not the way to go about changing, or at least not my own company. And then, pretty much, I was at Riot Mirror. I started looking at what to do. My mission was one mission. How do I go about making a difference there? And I found that even at IRTS, people do not work much with industry. So I started doing a little bit of work with industry, found the way into industry. And I found that industry was pretty much importing everything, had all technology, and India R and D team was not contributing anything. So all this was disturbing me and say, how do you really make changes? And I think in this context that I started seeing several things happen in the country. First was the nilma coming into the country had detergent powder challenging surf and got established. So I suddenly realized that affordability is key in India. India is a very large market if you make products affordable and that's a way very quickly things can happen in the country. Then the second thing that happened was the sachets that started coming shampoo satchets around that again it captured the imagination of the people. And again the affordability message got drilled into my higher head. And there's more important this STD PCO app that basically somebody could set up PCO telephone was it took me eight years to get a telephone. Getting a telephone impossible. And somebody actually then studied PCO was set up so that people could get calls. The PCO was making a lot of money but the entrepreneur had come in in the process and soon that its entrepreneur expanded the business and very soon this was replicated to almost 100,000 esttic PCOS around the country. And what I also got is this http PCOS actually around the STD PCOS if it was set up in some remote area, that whole area industry gain developed. So in my mind the whole idea of startup or business, small business as a way to develop the country came up and it is from that point of time I basically looked at technology and startups as a way to change the country and that became a mission instead of politics and that I started doing that. The only thing was that startups was totally the concept of startups was not even there. And particularly university based startup people often question even my senior colleagues asked me that this is the place where we worship. Savaswati how? Could we of bringing Lakshmi and you know, lakshmi and Sarah stated does not get along well together and we are going to create conflict and it's going to hurt the education institute. I was taken aback by these remarks but I thought through this and I found that if the knowledge, the Sarasota, the knowledge that we generate, the RND that we do, if it does not serve the society, then what is the purpose of this? And the only way to serve the society was actually pushing in this startups and technology transfer and you have to bring in Lakshmi. And in my mind this dichotomy of Sarasota versus Lakshmi was a false dichotomy and we need to overcome that. That was the starting point where that took place around 92, 93 that I started pushing for incubating companies or creating startups. Of course, the startups was still not formalized. The concept of startup creating startups was not formalized. So for me all this was still going under the table. Quietly do it without anybody doing it like that. It was only in early part of this, 2003, 2004 I think 2003 poor, poor. I remember a policy was set up in Department of Science and Technology. I participated in it. In Aari Madras. We set up a policy around 2002 and I think that's the whole concept of startup or finance. I remember 2004 and 2005, DST took it up that they will create startup at the university and that's the beginning of the whole journey.
Pronojit
Awesome.
DR. ASHOK
Great.
Pronojit
So I think that's really interesting to how you created synergy between Lakshmi and Saraswati. I'm really thankful for that. And that also I think culminated into you founding your own startup, I would say the ITM Research Park and the incubation cell over the past decade. So can you walk?
DR. ASHOK
I had incubated about 20 companies in Viti and early part of 2001. Two these companies were never formally incubated, but Virtue and Incubation was there and we created these companies. A few of these companies we supply today are doing where feet went down. Well, we are simultaneously working on developing technology. We are developing wireless and local loop and developing technology and transferring it to industry to scale up. So it is in this context the idea of research parking. Basically the concept of Research Park is there are three sets of people need to work together. The first is a faculty who kind of embodies knowledge and a wide knowledge, not in a narrow area. The second is a experienced industry person who knows how to convert a prototype into a product and understand what sells, understand how to manufacture something which works 24 by seven and serves the market. And the third was this youngster, young student, not this young graduate. Large number of them used to take hundreds of them. And the key contribution for that came from privatization of engineering which really opened up large number of young engineers coming and we started recruiting them. This young engineer brings it a very important component. He or she does not know that it cannot be done. Please note does not know that it cannot be done. If I went with a very, very low and Robin idea to experience the engineer they would try to say well, it is not possible, this is impossible, this cannot be done. A youngster does not know that it cannot be there. So if you inspire a youngster put them along with faculty member and put them with industry person then big innovations happen and this is the formula that we learnt in ninety S and we wanted to set up research path primarily is bringing industrial RND IIT's own R and D faculty and a lot of youngsters from nearby engineering colleges together to create the innovation platform. That is what we set up, and it took us quite some time. The idea of research park was initiated in 1998. But it was 2008 when we were able to set up the research park. In the meantime, we had started setting up Incubator. We set up Rural Technology Business, Incubator. I think in 2006 and once the research park was set up we moved everything out here and we set up IoT and incubation serve so RND can need to be commercialized even the established industry will take it up and commercialize it wherever. Established industry basically feels that this is too radical technology and they are both about it. You do a startup and that's how we complemented. And overall, after some time, startup had his own journey and innovation and interpretership and startup got ribbon.
Pronojit
I think I missed the entire research park and Incubation sales journey just by a year or so and I really drew that fact. I graduated from It One Grass in 2008 and I remember all the research talks happening and in fact, in that last year this was getting formed and I was really looking forward to it. So this time I was there one month back in It Madras on a tour. So I did visit and really astonished by the facilities and the services we have there.
DR. ASHOK
But why should you come through, meet us?
Pronojit
I met a few of the founders at that time. I reached out to others and it was very short notice or that was bad on my part, but next time I'll definitely make it a point to have a connect with you. So from there, I now want to shift gears and focus on the incubation cell. And at incubation cell, I understand we take our pride as being the leading deep tech incubation startup hub. So I want to understand how do you define deepdeck in the first place?
DR. ASHOK
So actually deepdeck is basically where significant technologies involve and it is not. I'd say we divide the whole startups in two parts. One, where significant technology takes a lot of technological effort to come up with product. Daw is more like e commerce kind of platforms where also technology can play a role but basically a good commercial understanding. For example even setting up an old app where primarily you are trying to consolidate and get drivers to apply for you. Of course, the software which will manage everything is significantly complex. But I will say basically ecommerce commerce. Ecommerce and BigTech. So I divide. Deep tech is where significant technology is at all. And not just in software, but in every aspect. Materials, electronics, mechanical all kind of deep technologies involved. That's how I understand. I don't want to define that too finally in the way of bother to do that. But by and large at Iitbank Commission serve we are probably practically low e commerce stuff. Got it. Basically application focus though we played a major role in bringing mobile telephone into the house. But they are also significant amount of artificial intelligence. Have other things used.
Pronojit
Understood. So next like can you highlight why IITM incubation cell is one of the best places for a deep tech startup.
DR. ASHOK
You know, even this research park to set up this research park we spread around 500 crops but we set it up like a startup. We got some seed money but we borrowed from the bank almost close to 304 decor now when you function like a startup you create at lost fear you create an aura of startup. I think even on Incubation Set we took a small amount of money. We got some grant from government, some private donors, but pretty much built everything after that which did not depend on grant only because what we felt is that we can never make other startups successful if we do not act as a startup. So for us, we adopted everything. Paul startup, low hours of work, very deep work, hard work, willing to fail, taking risks, not depending on grants and not depending on grants is the key thing, I think that has Set Incubation sell apart. You had no option but to succeed. See, when you don't depend on that, you have no option but to succeed. Incumbent companies in similarly they have no option but to succeed succeed there's no failure point and I have always found that using money hurts you give EC money. We never gave easy money, even one lakh rupees. If you are going to get from us, you have to work very hard for that most incubators in the country. I'll say give EC money. Try to attract people by giving money that chances of success is very low because the people will come and work with you only till the money lost. And you can never give one fund them enough so the once the money ends, that's the end of it. And that's what happens in most other. We don't make it easy, make it very difficult even to get a final accrue scan. You have to come to a committee and it's an external committee, not IIT amending the committee headed by Ram Raj of Sikova Capital. Head of Sikova capital. It's not easy. The person, the community will ask lots of hard questions. And unless we are really even of five, max will not. That makes us succinct.
Pronojit
Understood. Great and it's really great to hear that it's like the DNA of a startup ingrained in the incubation cell and research park so you feel at home and if you are of the same DNA you succeed, else you don't get in.
DR. ASHOK
So this is a pace here. It has been very unique. If you look at historically last 1012 years almost 80% or 80 plus percentage of companies have survived most of the pieces. 10% companies are white, 15 survived here, 80% have survived. We also by the second thing that we teach right from beginning the day somebody walks in and say I want to be incubated we actually give them person very hard time. We essentially say you are not ready, you will not succeed. You don't know. We ask question do you know how to fail? What happens when somebody shouts at you? How do you behave? Because success for a startup vote is comes after us repeated three years. Fail, fail, fail, fail and succeed. Every time you fail you need to be able to get up and restart. I think that is the characteristic we are looking from the youngster who come to us for setting up staff and if they do not need that, we ask them to go back.
Pronojit
Great. And I think that is a good feedback as well. Even if they go back, they know what it takes to succeed and they may come back again to you revamped.
DR. ASHOK
But most people will come back. This is where the problem takes place in many places I find that administration, the director, all these people start telling oh, this should be incubated. This whole thing is bound for failure. You'll keep the complete administration of the IIT or college away from this whole process. You bring an industry person, give it a very limited number of faculty members who understands that EC money hurts. That is what waste himself, right?
Pronojit
It bodes well with the quote I heard some time back. It's like you've become an overnight success after ten years of failure. So that's really great to see and hear.
DR. ASHOK
Once again. In fact, we often ask the question suppose comes and tells me she wants you to start. So after some people ask us that have you got shopping from people? What happens? How do you react when somebody shows it? Because like we said, no, no obstacles will come shopping people will show that the market will shout it. You don't need to be able to handle that. Inner strength has to be there, right?
Pronojit
So once someone gets accepted into the system, how does incubation sell support their growth?
DR. ASHOK
So they need law of nurturing. We don't give easy money. That part I have told you already. What we try to do is bring in a certain discipline. For example, we insist that the companies have a board very early. At least one person in the board must be an independent member. And when we get a mentor who's also get invited on the board and of course the or incubation seller presenter goes on board. Vincent insists that he should have a monthly board meeting. If the let's do not have anything to do anything present it doesn't matter fix a day every month when you first day of third tuesday 04:00 P.m. Even with our vote meeting we wouldn't give what you need to do in the pool meeting we say the first slide should be a summary slide what went well? What went so? So what did non go well? Second slide should be minutes of the last meeting and action taken based on that the third slide should be your financials PLL cash flow, balance sheet, what is the receivable? What is paper? Next slide, what is your sales fund? What is your market looks like? What is the probability of each product? Your product is not even in the market. We will start asking these questions then what is happening with the product development? What stage is it? So in the sense we also ask the marketing what are you doing about the market then product development, how are you actually doing it? What stage are how have you tested the product? How do you ensure that product will work 24 by seven in the market? And we ask the question why will this product be liked by the user? At what price will they lab wanted? What were the margins for this product? All these questions we asked the next we talk about team what team do you have? How much are you paying them? Why will they stay with you? So we then we look at all kinds of things like compliance are you being compliant? Because we strongly encourage that from day one you become shared compliant. You are too much aware if you are not compliant with the training that everyone should do funding all these things, they look okay.
Pronojit
Got it. So I think really setting off on the start of governance aspect and processes to help them channelize towards success through a proven process that has worked multiple times through the center’s experience. So that really bodes well for all these startups. Can you highlight few of these startups which have gone through this rigor and now excelled some and created impact in the economy right now?
DR. ASHOK
Well, I can sort of say this process has evolved me so the early startup we get this but not in this regular manner but we learn from each of course we have a large number of very good startups uniform is now well known, he is a multibillion dollar company. We have this 8th which is now the biggest company moving started by two youngsters coming to rural area to try to teach software in one Nicholasan, which is doing extremely well made body Meditude, the online earth platform is doing extremely well planned detect sinema stenaps company after company has goal. In fact, we have dominated the startup award of economic times for the last ten years.
Pronojit
Okay great.
DR. ASHOK
There's no stopping many more to come.
Pronojit
I'm sure gazillion mode to come I'm sure with the kind of processes and infrastructure that we have in place. So I have been discussing with a few of these startups that are currently incubated, like Solinas, Xyma Analytics, Fabheads, and the kind of stories I hear from them are really testament of what you are saying. And that's really heartening to see, especially for something happening in the deep tech space.
DR. ASHOK
Okay.
PRONOJIT
Okay. So now I want to get a bit forward looking and get your views on some of the future initiatives that have been planned at ITM Incubation. Cell.
DR. ASHOK
We are right now incubating 45 companies a year. Our objective is to get it to 1000 companies a year by 23. And we plan to do it by actually partnering tier two, tier three institutions and tier two, tier three towns and getting their youngsters excited. We are creating build clubs in these institutes to create a culture of building things, a very important component which will result into people getting confidence that they can build and do a start. And we want to more or less do a version of what we do out here in different places. We are already starting an objective is to bike. I think we need to get thousands tribes.
PRONOJIT
Okay, that's really bold, but I'm sure with the capable hands of yourself and the others involved, that's something that's going to be achieved maybe sooner than later. So next, what are some of your viewpoints on the future of deep tech industry as a whole? Or what are the perspectives that you see? What are some trends that you see play out in the next few years?
DR. ASHOK
So, India's biggest trend is twofold. Number one, fairly very high quality youngsters. Now, I need to qualify that there are large number of young graduates, engineering as well as non engineer, very large million engineering, several million which are from other college, other types of colleges. Have they got great education, undergraduate education? No. But many of these colleges have not given graphic education. But basically they are all coming from lower middle class to middle class, middle class to upper middle class. And they've acquired enough skills and are very uncle and they are willing to work very hard, very long hours initially to just get their whole life and their family's life ahead. And that large number of youngsters going for it. If you can survive, motivate them, tap them, you can make a huge difference. That's one strength of India. The second strength of India is that India is a very large market, 1.4 billion people. It's a large market, of course only for affordable products because of our income. So if you love to make affordable products, you and quality products, you can sell it. So I think these true strengths is what I see playing more and more in the future. Why action? As a country, we continue to focus, to do well, keep motivating, not divert their attention into frivolous thing. As a country, we need to be united, religious divide, caste divide. Any divide hurts. We need to say that still large number of people in India are lower witchcraft and middle class. And they can rise up by working hard, learning, failing and getting up and working again hard. That is what they need.
PRONOJIT
Got it? So lastly, sir, you have motivated and guided so many entrepreneurs. What is your top three advice to aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking to start their entrepreneur journey?
DR. ASHOK
I do not know what advice I can give. Well, learn to fail. Learn to fail and learn to get up and say here if you are not failing, you are not taking enough risk. This is a time as a youngster you can fork to take risk to fail. So learn to fail and not be afraid of failure. But also learn lessons from failure and get up again. At least start. Keep learning. You need a very wide area. You get to learn finance, you get to learn product sales, marketing, HR, every aspect of it. And you need to learn all this not you need to have a good understanding. The most important thing is build a good team. A solid team which trusts me. It is a team which will make you win singly. You cannot win if you have a team which stays together in all ups and downs, particularly in towns, you will win. This is all that I can see. India is a country with very large market, but with affordable products. Enterprise ship is not easy. Do not think it is easy. Just don't give up. Right?
PRONOJIT
Got it. Thank you sir for all the sage advice. I'm sure the listeners would really take those insights. They can take more confident steps, as many others have taken with your guidance. I really appreciate you taking out time for this giving, sharing your thoughts, sharing your insights about the incubation cell. Thank you and wish and research park and incubation cell not many success.