“We have tried to work with lots of different IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), and in most cases, there is no strong output that comes from these colleges,” the founder of a high-technology Indian company that works on strategic technologies key to India’s, and the world’s, future tells this writer.
Surprising as it may sound, this frustration isn’t isolated.
Such a sentiment echoes across a section of India’s private sector that engages academia in pursuit of market-ready products. It represents a fundamental disconnect in India’s innovation ecosystem that has hampered the country’s technological ambitions for decades.
And yet without strong private sector participation, India’s research often stays trapped in academic journals instead of becoming market-ready products. Scientists struggle for funding. Patents gather dust. And some of the brightest minds take their ideas abroad, where industries are all too glad to bet on them.
So why does the Indian academia struggle to work with the industry? One answer is that academia is simply not designed to work with the industry and has different sets of motivations and incentives.
“Academia is trained to discover and publish, not necessarily to exploit knowledge for commercial gain,” Kartik Kumar, Centre Director of Saint-Gobain Research India (SGRI), said in a report about the IIT Madras Research Park, authored and published in January 2025 by the Foundation for Advancing Science and Technology (FAST India). “This mindset made it challenging to adopt a utilisation-oriented system that industry sought.”
Kumar’s experience is from the early 2010s. The IIT Madras Research Park, India’s first university-based research park, conceived by Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala in the spirit of bringing academia and industry on one page, had just gotten underway, and SGRI had signed on as its first industry partner. More on Prof Jhunjhunwala and the IIT Madras Research Park later in this article.
“If it’s industry, their overarching objective is, it has to make sure it (the technology) is mature, and they have to make money out of it. They are reporting to shareholders,” explains Vinod Shankar, Founding Partner at Java Capital, a pre-seed/seed venture capital fund.
“Same thing in academia,” he continues. “Their major objective is to educate people. Their objective is not to pursue commercial innovation. Their objective is to get quoted in research papers and be visible as an institution of eminence.”
But what good is a lot of papers and patents if nobody gets to see or commercialise products and services out of the research knowledge gained?
Thus, believes Shankar, scientific discovery and paper publication are just one portion of academic work. “The other portion is to do nation building in some form, which is commercialising research and development and not just writing research papers.”
In the book Industry-Academia R&D Ecosystem in India…An Evidence Based Study, Dr M K Bhan, former secretary to the Government of India, Department of Biotechnology, made a similar point: “Publications of research papers may give the scientist a sense of pride and satisfaction, but its practical value to the nation depends on the extent to which academic knowledge and tools are commercialized.”
Dr Bhan, like Prof Jhunjhunwala, was an eminent scientist who fostered industry-academia collaboration. The renowned paediatrician and public health luminary conceived the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) with the goal of enabling strategic research and innovation and the development of biotechnology products relevant to the nation.
The Product Journey
Academia’s struggles in the technology development journey begin early. They are compelled to knock on the doors of government funding agencies for initial investment, using which they hope to begin their march from a bright idea to a prototype.
Private sector funding typically comes in at a much later stage, after a prototype has been developed all the way up to “technology readiness levels” of 7 or 8.
Technology readiness levels indicate the maturity level of a particular technology. Levels 7 through 9 fall under the deployment phase and come after the research and development phases. Government funding agencies support levels 1 through 4, and the private sector takes charge in levels 7 through 9.
The intermediate phase, comprising levels 4 through 7, is sometimes referred to as the “valley of death;” a product might find neither academic nor private support and run the risk of hitting a dead end well before the deployment of the product.
Industry-academia collaboration is a bridge that is meant to help the development of products through this difficult phase, but these partnerships are not always smooth sailing.
Getting Real
Before research can reach the “valley of death,” it must first attract good talent and motivated students to work on real-world technology solutions. That, many believe, is Indian academia’s big challenge.
In top Indian academic setups like the IITs, engineering undergraduates don’t typically work on real-world technology solutions.
“MTechs work on a few (such projects), and the PhDs are those who work on core projects; otherwise there are research assistants (who do this work),” says the founder Swarajya spoke to. Whereas, in top universities in more technologically advanced places like the US and Europe, undergraduates are actively involved in core engineering projects.
Professors in India often claim there is a dearth of “good, motivated students” to work on technology development. However, this raises a question: If even the top Indian engineering institutions are not attracting “good, motivated students,” then who is?
The more motivated students, though few in number, also have different expectations. They are eager to solve “great” research problems, hoping to produce groundbreaking papers, rather than tackling simpler yet practical problems.
“When you give them problems, they see that if this (problem) cannot be turned into a great paper, it is not worth solving. Because this (the “simple” problem), anyone can do. Whereas no one actually does it,” says the ex-IITian founder.
The delays in getting a product out, and in some cases there is no product to show for at the end of the project term, leave the industry dejected. The founder who spoke to Swarajya said he had given funds to the tune of tens of lakhs to various IITs in the expectation of good products. But what he got in return “was not of great value.”
“They eventually say that the idea of the institute is not to do products but to do good research. There is no novelty in the products they deliver,” this founder says. “The products ultimately should be vetted through industry, not through academia alone. Because the one who is analysing or challenging the product should be the user.”
Professor Amitabha Bandyopadhyay of IIT Kanpur, however, says industry’s critique of academia’s inability to deliver products upon receiving funds isn’t always fair.
“The question is that when someone from the industry says they have given funding, is it (the funding) commensurate with the scale of the project?” The point being made is that if the quantum of funds is too little compared to what’s necessary to execute the project, product delivery is bound to suffer.
“I understand that there is always a danger of reckless spending,” the IIT Kanpur professor adds. “You try to guard against that and be conservative. But then there will be project delays. If there are project delays, then the product will not materialise. So someone, somewhere, has to take a call,” he says.
Prof Jhunjhunwala of IIT Madras Research Park fame sees a fundamental flaw in how academia approaches technology development.
“Academia looks at industry from the point of view of how I can get more funds. They are not interested in developing technology which can win in the market. The essential thing is to work together towards technology which can win in the market,” Prof Jhunjhunwala tells Swarajya.
The Padma Shri awardee believes researchers need to give economics far more respect. “You have to start with economics and technology together. I would even say economics should come one step before technology,” he asserts.
This realisation in the 1980s is what drove Prof Jhunjhunwala to drive remarkable innovation over decades, starting with making telephone connectivity more affordable and widely accessible.
“When we were looking for telephones for everyone in India, the key thing we figured out, the reason why telephones were not available to everyone in India, was it did not make economic sense,” he said in his retirement speech at IIT Madras.
Prof Jhunjhunwala helped reduce the cost of telephone connectivity from Rs 40,000 in the 1980s to Rs 10,000 by around the mid-1990s. And by the early 2000s, the significantly lower cost had helped India achieve the target of 100 million telephones, up from a mere 8 million in the 1980s.
He similarly reduced the cost of ATMs, making them more affordable and accessible. He brought down the cost from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 75,000 with the benevolent motivation that an ATM in every village would bring financial inclusion in the country.
“So, one of the basic understandings that we got is that it is economics that has to go hand in hand with technology,” he said in the farewell address to the institute.
“If industry can make money, they will always go ahead,” says Prof Jhunjhunwala. “If with imported technology they can make money, they will do that. If with Indian products they can make money, they will do that. If they can’t make money, why will they be involved, and why will they fund? After all, their dharma is to make money.”
The Hype Problem
Another roadblock to meaningful collaboration is scientific hype and the media’s appetite for it. This problem has exploded more recently, as there are umpteen digital channels to propagate the hype.
“In recent years, every day in the newspaper, I see academia saying, ‘I have done this, I have done that’ — all half-baked, unfinished things, not even necessarily proof of concept. And the media is very ready to publish it and create hype. False hype creates a huge problem,” warns Prof Jhunjhunwala.
Research built on hype may attract funding but will eventually fail to scale. Rather than labelling every new discovery as “groundbreaking,” the media should track research ideas over time and monitor their commercialisation journey.
“More important is products which sell — in India and outside India. You have to make products which sell; you have to make revenue out of that. And not grants and investment money. Investment money and grants don’t matter as much as products and revenue. Any company is successful only if it makes revenue,” Prof Jhunjhunwala emphasises.
When It Clicks
Given these divergent views and differences in incentive structures, is there no way for the twain to meet? Despite their naturally differing inclinations and resulting frictions, academia and industry have on occasion pulled together to pull off amazing feats.
An exceptional case is when Prof Bandyopadhyay, along with entrepreneur Srikant Sastri and two IIT Kanpur graduates, developed a fully functional, life-saving ICU (intensive care unit) ventilator in just 90 days during the Covid-19 pandemic, when India desperately needed the ventilator.
In a more recent achievement, Prof Bandyopadhyay led a team of IIT Kanpur faculty members who worked in collaboration with a startup to rapidly develop a handheld x-ray machine. The product was developed in just two years, thanks to the generous and flexible funding from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
Moreover, shares the professor who was in charge of innovation and incubation at IIT Kanpur until recently, ICMR officers acted like team members rather than regulators to make the development process extremely efficient. Prof Bandyopadhyay and team are now awaiting rapid regulatory clearance of the product before it can be taken to the hospitals.
These cases are a demonstration of academia’s excellent capabilities when circumstances align.
The IIT Madras Research Park, under the leadership of Prof Jhunjhunwala, has also stood tall as an excellent model of academia-industry collaboration. Despite the initial struggle to meld the worlds of academia and industry, the IIT Madras Research Park has seen the execution of over 900 joint projects and an R&D investment of Rs 680 crore since its establishment in 2010.
The IIT Madras Research Park also struggled with academia-industry collaborations in the early years of its operations. That was due to a mismatch between the technology readiness levels of academic projects and industry requirements. But its persistence and adaptation ultimately paid off big time.
Where We Go From Here
Remember Prof Bandyopadhyay saying, “Someone, somewhere, has to take a call?”
“If I were the person to take a call,” he says, “what I would do is I would sit down with the industry, (tell them) that you give me a list of 20 products, which, if developed in the next three years, you will be willing to onboard it in your company, and put in 10 per cent of the project cost after a year, seeing the development. Then I will go to different academic institutions and ask for the 50 most promising groups in the country and engage them.”
Such a model, believes Prof Bandyopadhyay, would be a win-win for both academia and industry.
“I do not believe for a minute that our industry leaders do not understand that high-end products will bring them more money. What is lacking is confidence. Because historically, academia has not delivered. But academia has not delivered not because they are incompetent; academia has not delivered because their hands are tied. They are put in the middle of the ocean with weight around their waist,” he says.
Prof Jhunjhunwala’s economics-first approach is also something to take seriously. Technological development must be grounded in market realities from the very beginning. This means designing R&D projects with clear commercial viability in mind, rather than pursuing technology for technology’s sake.
It’s clear that for India to fulfill its aspirations of becoming a self-reliant technology powerhouse, industry and academia must forge better partnerships, and while they work together, the objectives, at least on the specific R&D projects on which they collaborate, must be aligned. If it’s paper publication, so be it. If it’s product development, then that’s the output to go after.
India’s Economic Survey 2024-25 too called for a shift in focus towards applied research. Historically, India’s R&D efforts have centred largely around basic research. “This (nature of research) often lacks the practical applications needed to attract private investment. This gap needs to be bridged to streamline and drive innovations and investment across multiple sectors,” the survey said.
We now have enough examples of how this ‘gap’ can be bridged. The academia and, to some extent, the industry have to just commit and get going.
Also Read: Why India’s R&D Dreams Are Falling Behind: Funding Aside, Here’s A Look Inside The System
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