 Indian Institute of Technology Madras is known for excellence in technical education, basic and applied research, innovation, entrepreneurship and industrial consultancy. IIT Madras is a distinguished institute of national importance that has remained at the top of the ranking scales year after year. This year too, it continued to bag the top spot in the National Institute Ranking framework 2023 for fifth consecutive year. We at Innovation Cell had a pleasure of speaking with Director IIT Madras, Professor V. Kamakoti to understand the underlying spirit of IIT Madras that keeps it on a winning streak. One of the important things that we realized about NARF right from the time of its inception was that this is a very collective effort. This cannot happen just because of faculty, cannot happen just because of students. It is a collective effort of student, faculty, staff members, industry, alumni, everybody has a role to contribute to the parameters that are coming up and of course the total support of the government. I think all these five have fallen in correct place and that is why we are able to retain this rank and also improve on our scores. When you compare with what has happened last year to this year, we have improved on several friends. And the second thing is that we also do a very thorough detailed analysis on every parameter on a yearly basis and on a continual basis. And what we also found that when we are increasing from 0.75 to 0.85, that range was quite easy. If I want to go from 0.75 to 0.8, it was not a major effort that we need to do. But if I want to go from say 0.90 to 0.91, so as we start approaching the 100%, there are a lot of things that we need to keep in mind. There are a lot of big efforts, careful thinking process that need to be put there. So that is one which we are continuously following up and we are putting those efforts at the proper place, so that those parameters improve. More than the ranking, more than the scores that we get, we find this NAR of framework to be extremely important for the institute, for the betterment of the processes, betterment of the education that we are giving, betterment of our research and innovation on all these friends. We have aligned ourselves completely with the national education policy. So there are two or three important things that we have in mind. Number one is that we are currently looking at large amount of interdisciplinary research work. We have been granted the Institute of Eminence in 2018. Today last week we did open up 15 centres of excellence which are interdisciplinary in nature, meaning at least 10 faculty from 3 to 4 departments participate in this. And that is very important for the next generation research and for the next generation education also. So that is one thing which is very important and it has been very highly elaborated in the national education policy. The second important thing that we are is on the internationalisation front. We believe that we can go and contribute to the world, the Vishwaguru that we have been talking of. So we will be opening up a campus in Tanzania and everything goes well by October. And that is something which would be the first IIT to open a campus abroad. So that is also, the internationalisation front is also taking up a very important feature here. And that I believe will bring lot more of diversity into the campus, it will also expose us to multiple culture and for them to come and look at the Indian culture. So this is number 2 and we have been stressing on innovation and entrepreneurship. We have several success stories in the recent past and I am sure that over a period of time we will be doing a wonderful innovation and entrepreneurship stack for the country. We have a very systematic way by which a student gets an idea how he becomes a successful startup. And these are some of the very important things that we are focusing on. When we look at startups in other parts of the world, when you look at inverse stars, what they look at, whether I put this investment and whether I will get back that return, it is more like more of wealth oriented. But the startup culture that we have been developing here is to serve India, serve Indian needs. That is one thing that we are inculcating in our students. So for example, today we have done a startup which does a robo for septic tank cleaning which is essentially today an effort to remove manual scavenging in the country. We now have a startup which has done a very robust system for medical consultations. We have done a startup which is 3D printing rocket engines in our great space program that we have, the liberalized space program that the government has offered to us. There is enormous amount of economy development that is going to come there. But at the same time, we are looking at from a country's perspective, not just as a wealth generation perspective. And I believe that this perspective will make our startup more locally relevant and globally recognized. We have now what we call as an innovation stack. There is a center for innovation. There is just building the honorable vice president actually came and inaugurated the building. The center for innovation encourages students. There are several clubs in that, we have around 16, 17 clubs. Any student who has an idea, they come to the center for innovation. It is run by the student for the students and they will be given some reasonable amount of funding, they will be given mentorship to basically convert that idea into a design. And then there is a pre incubator called NIRMAN which will systematically now convert this design into a prototype. And then we have five incubators inside IIT Madras. We have the incubation cell of IIT Madras. And then we have a health technology innovation center. We have IITM Pravartak Foundation which is for the cyber physical system. We have a bio incubator and then we have a rural incubator. So we have five incubators there. Which basically enables this prototype to be converted into a startup. We also have a very effective patenting system where we encourage the students to patent. In the last year, we had the largest patent in the country among academic institutions. We had filed around 240 plus patents and we had around 170 plus that was granted. And then we have the Gopala Krishnan Deshpande Center which is funded by two of our illustrious distinguished alumnus Chris Gopala Krishnan and Desh Deshpande which basically nurtures the startup to make them a unicorn. So we have very good startup stories. The Aether Scooter is one of IIT Madras incubator startup. You will be seeing Agni Kool that is coming up in a very big way. TUTOR which is working on the Hyperloop is coming out in a big, we had two very good exist in the last year from two companies MediBuddy and other smaller exits we have. So this overall we have these, all these stacks that we have set up and the way things are proceeding gives us a lot of confidence that we are doing things right. And I believe that this will be a very big churning point in trying to get more employers in the country than employees. So I gave you two examples, one was the example of the septic tank cleaner Robo which is today can completely eradicate manual scavenging in the country which the Honorable Supreme Court has come down and said that manual scavenging should be stopped. Socially also we feel it is relevant. Agni Kool for example will now give a different landscape into how we produce rocket engines. They have a patent on technology. We have TUTOR the Hyperloop which will redefine in my opinion the transportation of our country specifically the goods transportation. We have the E-plane company that is coming up which will be an ad taxi, it will be of very high innovation here. In addition we have port center, one of the largest port centers in Asia where we can simulate the sea, we can simulate vessel design etc. And I believe lot more of startups are going to come out because India is a country where we have a ocean named after our country the Indian Ocean. We enjoy a large Sagarmala of course and maritime is very very important and that is going to be a big economy booster. So we are seeing lot of startups in the direction. We already have lot more of startups working on non-destructive testing the lab grown diamond that is coming up for which this year we have got a 250 crore funding and that is going to be a major turning point. We also have a discovery campus which is 25 kilometers away from our main campus at Chennai and there we have all these multiple startups and multiple big long large size projects that are happening. So I think today the policies of the government are really helping. For example if you look at the drone policy which came last year has helped many startup companies including several IIT Madras company investing in the drone technology to take this up. There are lot of PLI schemes, performance and production linked incentive schemes that are promoted by the government. So there is a policy intervention, a positive policy intervention that is taking this up. This is number one. Number two is that these companies are deep into technology. If you take Hyperloop for example you have 78 students from six different departments which involve computer science, electrical, mechanical, materials, structures, aerospace and all. So we are now see design for example. So we are seeing massive deep technology development there. So the only thing that we need to make it right and we are trying to do that is that the investors get confidence in these companies and invest in them. If it is normally we see specifically I work in the area of semiconductors and we have five startups in the area of semiconductors coming out of my lab. But the only thing that we see is that we are very keenly working on Atma Nibbata but the investors must get the Atma Vishwas, the confidence in these startups and in our own startups and then fund them. I think that is started happening and that slowly we will build that trust and more and more success stories do come. I am sure we are going to become a great country. In 2047 when we look at technology leadership and we want to be technologically superior I think it is very very important that we have our innovation and entrepreneurship put right in that effort. One thing is every small idea you do not judge what the idea is go and patent it and let the patent decide whether it is a great idea or a smaller idea. For the greatness of your idea every time you should not and that is what is happening today. So patent all your ideas. This is my first request to all the students here. Every university has thousands of undergraduate and postgraduate theses that are submitted and many of these theses are patentable but they just missed the idea. So I think that is one first step that I would request all the students today protect your ideas by patenting and patenting has become very easy in our country in terms of it is just 1800 rupees or something like that and then even for expediting within 18 months you get yes or no that is also some 4000 rupees. So I think the process has become very simplified and it is very good for our country. So number one is they need to patent and second thing is let them take more risk in life. In a young age for example I am say 21 age and I may not have any big liability or loans or anything and I can probably take a couple of years risk to see whether I will be successful take that risk and I am sure other institutions will be that to help them. When at IIT Madras we have an incubation cell and we want to make it 10x in the sense we have been we have incubator on 300 companies want to make it 3000 in the in the next few years. So we are also trying to you know adopt more incubators and help them mentor companies. So the incubators today must be given some good level of funding reasonable amount of funding and they should encourage the start-ups with some initial funding in return to equity and I think that is the way we need to go up. And in the end that was some valuable advice for our young innovators and entrepreneurs from Professor Kamakoti. We will soon have some more from the world of technology and innovation from IIT Madras. Keep watching this space. Goodbye.