IIT Madras, CII ink MoU

Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology Madras and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) are going to collaborate to nurture and promote 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.

Towards these objectives, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Gopalakrishnan-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 recently at Hyderabad on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the CII - Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre.

This collaboration will facilitate novel research ideas and innovative ventures in the cleantech space that would be trained and mentored by GDC at various academic institutions across India, and enabling the startups so created in reaching out to industry for networking and business opportunities as they seek to scale.

Speaking about the outcomes of this collaboration, R. Raghuttama Rao, Chief Executive Officer, GDC - IIT Madras, said, "Our experience is that 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 the 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 Summit GreenCo Summit and Green Power to network and reach out to 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, Jamshyd N. Godrej, Chairman, CII- Godrej GBC, said that with the climate challenges that 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 Godrej.