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“Forget Shark Tank, the real startup story is unfolding at IIT Madras Incubation Cell (IITMIC) in the IIT Madras Research Park,” said Aditya Kondawar, partner and vice president at Compcircle, a wealth and asset management firm.
Kondawar is right. Many notable startups, including top names like Ather Energy, Mindgrove Technologies, and MediBuddy, have all emerged from IIT Madras. According to him, IITMIC has an 80% success rate with startups.
Talking about MediBuddy, Kondawar said that it has raised $200 million to date and is currently valued at close to $500 million. He further said that IIT Madras plans to conclude 2024 with 366 patents and 100 new startups and claimed that IITMIC owns “1% equity in many of these companies, making INR 50-60 crore a year”.
Kondawar also spoke about IIT Madras’ ‘10x Plan’, which aims to scale incubations dramatically and elevate India’s technological standing globally. For this, the institute is looking to raise the number of companies to 1,000 a year, from about 45 at present.
The incubation cell plans to partner with 50-100 incubators in Tier-2, 3, & 4 institutes and nurture their incubates to build India’s best R&D in the world for startups working in the field of AI-ML.
Uniphore, a company that builds conversational AI products, is another notable name in the AI ecosystem to have come out of IIT Madras. Interestingly, the institution is also home to AI4Bharat, a research lab dedicated to advancing AI technologies tailored to Indian languages and regional needs.
Inside IITMIC
According to data from the IITMIC, the number of startups founded by faculty members surged from 37 in April 2017 to 69 by June 2019, and 80 in 2020, to finally reaching 94 by October 2021. These startups were incubated by IITMIC, one of India’s top deep technology startup hubs.
A total of 77 faculty members from various departments of the institute have been involved in establishing these startups. This number represents nearly 13 percent of the institute’s total faculty strength of around 600, a proportion that the IIT Madras Incubation Cell claims is comparable to the best universities globally.
Faculty members at IIT Madras have founded at least 94 startups, with a combined valuation exceeding INR 1,400 crore. These ventures range from developing hybrid aerial vehicles to converting waste into crude oil and creating efficient water transport solutions.
According to officials, the IIT faculty members have founded, mentored or advised over 240 startups in the past decade, which today have a combined valuation of INR 11,500 crore.
Furthermore, the institute is currently targeting the incubation of at least 100 startups across various sectors in 2024. V Kamakoti, the director of IIT Madras, sharing his targets for 2024, said that IIT Madras saw a lot of ambitions being realised during 2023.
“In the past year, we took up several important projects, including the IITM Zanzibar campus, which became the first-ever IIT to be established overseas. We also launched a department of medical sciences and technology, and are aspiring to do many more things in that direction,” he added, saying that he looks to close this financial year with the maximum number of projects.
Aravind Srinivas, the founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, is an alumnus of IIT Madras. In 2022, Srinivas co-founded the company that recently achieved unicorn status with a valuation of $1.04 billion.
Going Beyond IIT Madras
While IIT Madras may get all the limelight, there are good incubation programmes at other IITs as well. For instance, IIT Kanpur has developed a centre of excellence (CoE) for AI and has a startup incubation programme called Startup Incubation and Innovation Centre (SIIC). It fosters innovation, research, and entrepreneurial activities in technology-based areas, including AI.
Similar incubation programmes and support for tech/AI startups can be seen at IIT Kharagpur, Bombay and Delhi. Capillary Technologies, founded in 2008 by IIT Kharagpur alumni Aneesh Reddy, Krishna Mehra, and Ajay Modani, was incubated at IIT Kharagpur.
SensiBol, founded in 2011 by Vishweshwar Rao, was incubated at IIT Bombay the following year. HyperVerge, started in 2013 by Kedar Kulkarni, Vignesh Krishnakumar, Kishore Natarajan, Saivenkatesh Ashokkumar, and Praveen Kumar, was also incubated at IIT Madras.
Abroad, particularly in tech hubs like Silicon Valley, startups benefit from a well-established ecosystem with ample venture capital, advanced infrastructure, and a culture of innovation. Many companies have originated from institutions like Stanford University, exemplifying this advantage.
The university has been a prolific breeding ground for tech startups and influential companies. Notably, Apple Inc was co-founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, with Jobs’s experience there playing a significant role in shaping his vision for the company, despite having dropped out of the university.
Similarly, NVIDIA, founded by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem, emerged from Stanford’s engineering talent pool to become a leader in graphics processing technology.
LinkedIn, the widely used professional networking platform, was co-founded by Reid Hoffman, an alumnus, while Yahoo! was created by Jerry Yang and David Filo, both Stanford graduate students again.
India, too, is on the right track with a similar ecosystem evolving in the country.
Now is the Best Time for AI Startups in India
Interestingly, India ranks third among the top five countries in terms of business funding, surpassing both the United Kingdom and Germany.
Antler, a VC firm, recently announced a $10 million investment in early-stage Indian AI startups. Rajiv Srivatsa, partner at Antler, shared the news on X, emphasising: “NOW is the best time to build a startup in India!”
Similarly, last month, Google introduced several initiatives to enhance AI development in India, including a partnership with the MeitY Startup Hub to train 10,000 startups.
At the Google I/O Connect Bengaluru, the tech giant introduced the ‘2024 Class of Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First’ program in India. This cohort includes 20 exceptional AI-first startups from diverse sectors such as gaming and manufacturing, chosen from over 1,030 applications nationwide.
Earlier in March, reports suggested that India will partner with chip-making giant NVIDIA to procure up to 10,000 of its GPUs and NPUs and offer them at subsidised rates to local startups, researchers, academic institutions, and other users in a bid to boost the AI infrastructure in India.
Furthermore, the JioGenNext team invests heavily in AI startups, providing tailored support and strategic insights. The latest MAP’24 cohort included 10 generative AI startups spanning healthcare, banking, legal services, and agriculture.
