Digging Deep(Tech): Where IITB stands in Research Translation

IIT Bombay, along with other IITs, was established in the late 1950s to jumpstart the industrial economy of India. It was part of a state-driven, nation-building project designed to produce India’s very own skilled engineers and technocrats. Although modelled after MIT, there was a fundamental difference here – MIT, from its inception by private interests, was created in response to the need for solutions towards the rapid industrialisation in the US. While institutions like Stanford and MIT have focused on research translation into practical application from the beginning, such interests have only recently become a priority in the IIT ecosystem. And the manifestation of this has been a surge in efforts from the government, industry, academia and the administration to promote entrepreneurial activity with an emphasis on homegrown, deeptech innovation. At IIT Bombay, SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), BETIC (Biomedical Engineering and Technology Incubation Centre), and more recently, Project Titanium are all part of these concerted efforts to significantly upgrade the state of research translation and produce well-performing deeptech startups. Insight attempts to understand where we are in this journey and what systemic constraints are preventing us from ‘innovating at scale’.

What is DeepTech?

‘DeepTech’ refers to technology solutions based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges. They demand lengthy research and development, and large capital investment before successful commercialisation. These would usually align with startups built on emerging technologies from our campus labs and ready for real-world use. Lab-translated deeptech attempts to solve existing engineering problems in a more efficient or economical way. While the hype for service startups has largely banked on increased software and cloud capabilities, deeptech solutions herald the creation of technologies that are unlike conventional hardware and software tools. Two notable examples of deeptech born out of IITB are IdeaForge, a startup specialising in drone technology, and the recently launched startup ImmunoAct, which is pioneering the CAR-T Cell Therapy. Such examples of research translation may not always begin with the goal of commercialisation in mind, but as the research progresses, the market potential may become apparent, and a startup may be spun out.

SINE, IIT Bombay’s on-campus incubator, plays a central role in supporting the translation of research into startups, particularly in deep-tech and healthcare areas, which form a significant share of its current portfolio. The incubator encourages both faculty and student ventures by providing administrative support, mentorship, and limited seed funding, and helping identify business co-founders for research teams seeking to commercialise their work. SINE also works within existing government programs to connect startups to external investors and sources of patient capital.

​​Given its advanced labs, skilled ecosystem, and strong support structures, IITB should ideally be a leading centre for translating research into commercial and non-commercial impact. However, the potential remains to be exploited efficiently, as Insight explores ahead.

“For niche deep-tech in India, the challenge lies in creating demand itself, educating users before they can become consumers, unlike in service sectors where the market already exists”, mentioned a professor. Even as we look at the startups produced here on our own campus, there are but a few examples of companies building tech that have created disruptions in the market or gained widespread visibility in the last decade. A larger part of the student entrepreneurship initiatives continues to remain in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) domain, with a recent shift towards AI-based services. Although this may appear to leave IITB’s engineering talent underutilised, characterising such efforts as unambitious or lacking ambition risks oversimplifying the complex factors that shape research translation. Deeptech as a startup industry isn’t just hard – it’s unfeasible for students in college. For undergraduates, the challenge often comes from limited skills or experience. For postgraduates, it stems from a lack of trust in an unpredictable ecosystem marked by funding and infrastructure gaps. For students and research staff, the stakes are even higher: without stipends or financial safety nets, most gravitate toward safer academic or corporate paths. Taking the entrepreneurial route often means months without income and the risk of losing momentum in academic careers. The opportunity cost feels unbearable, especially when peers are securing stable jobs at multinationals. However, in recent years, conditions have been ripening for the other end of academia to venture into entrepreneurship – the professors.

Escaping the Lab

Journeys of professors dabbling in entrepreneurship are not uncommon, and there is a growing effort to make them the norm rather than the anomaly.

“Entrepreneurial efforts in academia are a fairly recent phenomenon; such initiatives were traditionally frowned upon as being money-driven,” mentioned a professor. Entering the academic world rarely comes with expectations of high earning potential. Years of rigorous research without foreseeable results often shape professors to value knowledge creation over commercial gain, while the business world feels like a contrasting pursuit. 

However, things are changing fast.

Governments and industries are more keen on working with universities, giving rise to a small but growing category of professors with industry experience; faculty members who are deeply entrenched in industry and are valued not for their publication count but for their ability to push research into the market. The Koita Centre for Digital Health (KCDH) is one visible example of this shift within IITB. 

Among traditional faculty, however, incentives and priorities remain varied. Younger professors often prioritise publications to secure their academic standing, while others continue to view research as a purely intellectual pursuit. The lack of visible role models exacerbates this gap, with so few venturing into startups, entrepreneurship appears risky and unattainable. The journey of translating research into a tangible venture is barely an easy endeavour. Where does a professor start?

The first step in such an effort is to identify the intent and potential. Prof. Mahesh Tirumkudulu, from the Chemical Engineering department, currently working on his own startup, explained that traditional research in the lab rarely ever begins with a very clear endpoint, and definitely not with potential for commercialisation. “The first step is to recognise that an idea can solve a problem uniquely and that it adds value”, he explains, as he recounts how his work on fluid mechanics of thin film flows solved a gap which motivated him to put it to commercial use. While some would stop once they’ve understood a phenomenon and move on, few can look beyond and see the market value. This stage marks the point where faculty begin exploring how such efforts align with their existing commitments, allowing the idea to develop further if the fit feels natural. This point also marks a departure for faculty who do not wish to remain deeply involved, while others are permitted by IITB to take a 1-2 year lien (unpaid sabbatical) and invest their time and energy better.

Once these pivotal junctures have been ironed out, the next step is to navigate institutional approvals for research translation. Since research is conducted using IITB’s facilities, the institute enforces strict rules and requires multiple permissions from the Dean of R&D’s office before professors can access the IP for startup development. Under IIT Bombay’s Revised Startup Policy (2024), all IP generated using significant institute resources legally belongs to IITB. Such IP must be licensed through IRCC, typically requiring a no-objection clearance, due diligence review, and a formal licensing agreement that may include equity or royalty components. For the same reason, IITB mandates that all professor-led startups be incubated at SINE. As per the earlier 2012 IP policy, IITB also follows a defined revenue-sharing model (inventors typically receive 70% of commercialisation proceeds,  and IITB 30%), which directly shapes founder economics during negotiations. 

A primary checkpoint is to verify that the IP in question has not been licensed anywhere else. As one professor recalls, “The ever-changing T&Cs for licensing the IP were a source of frustration while setting up my startup”. This battle for IP often results in prolonged legal back-and-forth between faculty and administration. These legal processes cannot be fast-tracked or bypassed, even with the involvement of external stakeholders supporting the startup.

IP ownership models are largely similar across IITs and even universities in the US, but there are minor caveats in how the policy is framed on paper. For example, a closer comparison of IITB and IITD IP policies suggested that in IITD, ownership and commercialisation are more explicitly tied to who funds or contracts the work, which appears more liberal than IITB’s blanket ownership. Although a better analysis of how the policy differs on the ground remains to be explored, it is understandable that minor policy differences can often magnify into significantly easier navigation through the legal red tape. 

While the steps to a startup are not necessarily sequential, securing funding is the major step after the IP is secured. However, this is also one of the toughest hurdles to cross in a deeptech venture.

Even when approvals are secured, structural barriers remain on the investment front. Indian corporates and government buyers are rarely receptive to early-stage deeptech products, preferring service-led solutions with faster payoffs. Even with well-placed intent, deeptech startups are exceptionally difficult to sustain. Unlike software-based startups, startups in areas like advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, etc. require a very high upfront investment, something the Indian ecosystem is yet to do as well as Silicon Valley or Kendall Square. Moreover, in the early stages of deeptech innovation, there may not be a clearly defined market opportunity, and the gestation period from the lab to the shop is often very long. 

These conditions make it very difficult to gain access to conventional investors. In this sense, deeptech initiatives present a very steep challenge. “Convincing Indian industry to bet on an unproven technology is an uphill task”, noted Prof. Siddharth Tallur from the Electrical Engineering department, who is developing microsystems for sensing applications as a co-founder at Nirixense Technologies. Scaling is further constrained by weak manufacturing capacity and the absence of patient capital to fund long development cycles.

Most early-stage funding for IITB-linked startups comes through government grants, such as those from BIRAC or MeitY. These schemes are critical lifelines, but they are milestone-heavy and slow to disburse, just like many other external funding sources due to reviews, compliance and paperwork. By the time funds reach the lab, a prototype may already be outdated, or the student team that initiated the project may have disbanded. Venture capital firms, meanwhile, prefer to enter only at later stages, once proof-of-concept is validated or early revenues are visible. 

Prof. Chandra Sekher Yeramalli, who has been actively working on better ways of providing support to research translation, notes, “Conventional funding supports research from TRL1 to TRL3/TRL4. A funding gap exists between TRL5 and TRL7. Thus, translational research support is required to take technologies from TRL-3/4 to TRL-7 and make the idea ready for commercialisation.” 

Conventional investment sources, particularly the venture capital ecosystem, are also relatively closed and selective, often concentrating on specific types of ideas and geographies, for example, software or consumer tech in India.  Sectors with strong industrial pull, such as semiconductors and biomedical technologies, naturally accelerate startup activity, aided by awareness drives and initiatives that engage both industry experts and students. Prof. Vinay Dabholkar from DSSE  mentioned that “Startups that emerge from BETiC in biomedical domains usually  move faster, because every year they bring doctors and students together for dedicated awareness drives that turn ideas into collaborations.” In contrast, niche deep-tech fields with limited industrial demand face slower adoption, making scaling and commercialisation considerably harder. Jayashree Nayak, who heads Project Titanium, informed us that even at SINE, current deep-tech startups are distributed unevenly: 21% in Electrical Engineering, 16% in Biosciences and Bioengineering, 16% in Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science, and 11% in Chemical Engineering, gravitating more towards the mainstream domains. 

This makes funding for deep-tech research startups in certain domains very challenging, as they typically target niche markets and require longer timelines to achieve significant growth and profitability. Prof. Yeramalli also pointed out that the ‘Institute of Eminence’ (IoE) funds used to aid the professors a lot on the initial funding front, especially in terms of lab equipment. But since these have stopped, the problem still persists. This sequencing creates a funding gap precisely when handholding is most critical. In a recent event organised to commemorate Project Tiatnium (more on this later), Rajeev Mantri, founder of Navam Capital (a venture capital firm focused on making seed and early-stage investments in deep tech) shared perspective on how the ecosystem is changing,

“Starting companies in India was not conducive earlier, because the economy did not have the scale, however, now, the public markets have expanded, financial institutions have become stronger, and Indians are financialising their savings, which has made more capital available.”

Private ventures in India nevertheless remain cautious – and this causes the funding gap to persist. SINE has attempted to bridge this gap with small cheques of ₹10–25 lakh, but these also come with equity dilution and revenue-sharing clauses. For deep-tech ideas, which require specialised equipment, infrastructure, regulatory approvals, skilled talent, and materials for scaling, the funding needed during the translation process typically runs into tens of crores, making such seed funding largely insufficient. 

For first-time founders, this creates a paradox: they must give up ownership before even proving their research is market-ready. What is justified on paper as a way to recycle returns into the incubator, in practice, makes young teams second-guess whether the risk is worth it. While the equity ask is not inherently wrong, it must also be matched with the necessary support that a startup needs in its nascent stage, apart from the funding. An alum who has launched their own deeptech startup recently mentioned, “As a founder, I felt that the equity demanded was not accompanied by equivalent support, guidance, or resources to help scale deep-tech ventures like mine.” 

While the startup scales the TRLs and secures funding, the business end of things also needs to be picked up simultaneously. As Prof. Tirumkudulu notes, “It is one thing to have an idea in the lab, quite another to sustain a venture without the right cofounders.” While the professors are usually busy scaling the tech in the lab, they look for co-founders with a business sense who can make sure that the product can be taken to the market, and thus, matchmaking becomes an essential piece in the puzzle. In deeptech ventures, which come with elongated timelines, co-founders are difficult to source and even harder to incentivise at an early, high-risk stage. Such issues have been identified over time, and initiatives like Project Titanium are actively working on plugging these holes.

An Effort to Bridge the Gap: Project Titanium

Recognising the challenges faced by professors at IIT Bombay while translating deep-tech IPs into pre-incubation startups, SINE launched Project Titanium. Funded by two IITB alumni – Ramesh Mangaleswaran (B.Tech, Metallurgical Engineering, 1989) and Rajesh Jain (B.Tech, Electrical Engineering, 1988), the initiative serves as a bridge between research in labs and SINE, providing professors with financial support, mentorship, and team-building opportunities. 

In our discussion with Jayshree Nayak, Program Director of Titanium, she explained that the team identifies promising research by looking at referrals and the IP list maintained by IRCC, ensuring they explore ideas across different domains. They then shortlist projects by checking whether the technology has a clear use case and whether the market is large enough to support a viable product. Some ideas, even if strong technically, don’t move ahead simply because the potential market is too small. To get faculty involved, the team personally goes where the real innovation happens, be it their labs or offices, learns what they are working on, and builds a relationship of trust. Instead of coming down to the SINE office, faculty members are far more comfortable showcasing their work in their own space, and this makes them more open to discussing the way ahead

Unlike typical funding models, Titanium’s grant-only model matters because it lets researchers test commercialisation without giving up ownership early, reducing risk and making participation more attractive. This is inspired by MIT’s Venture Monitoring System, which supports early-stage ventures by providing structured funding, mentorship, and progress tracking without taking equity. Each selected project receives a ₹50 lakh grant, disbursed in five phases of ₹10 lakh each. The grant comes with no restrictions, giving teams the freedom to allocate funds as they see fit and make decisions independently.

Each phase of Titanium funding is tied to defined milestones. It begins with team formation and mentor allocation, where Titanium actively connects with industry experts and project seekers through LinkedIn and other social media to match them with research projects, followed by defining the target application of the research, which, under the current norms, must be attainable within 18 months. Subsequent phases involve identifying markets, securing paying customers, and building co–creator networks. Recognising that professors and their teams often lack entrepreneurial experience or the bandwidth to commit fully, Titanium offsets this gap by providing dedicated mentors, full-time collaborators, and workspace at SINE’s Rahul Bajaj Centre.

Currently supporting 38 teams, Titanium is looking to expand, but is constrained by funding and wider institutional support. However, the program’s proven intent and impact highlight its potential to scale and empower more deep-tech startups in the future.

Close to Home, Yet Far Away

Against the backdrop of institutional efforts to improve research translation, Insight attempted to benchmark IITB’s ecosystem against others in India. Within the country, a visible gap appears to exist between IITB and its peers as well. The immediate comparables, IIT Delhi and IIT Madras, have stronger incubation systems that have performed better than IIT Bombay in certain metrics. These are not coincidental – several policy structures are much more conducive for faculty and students to venture into the deeptech arena.

According to FAST India, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the advancement of research and its translation in India, IITB’s startup incubator SINE has incubated approximately 262 IPs, compared to IITM’s 365. In response to this, Prof. Nishant Sharma, the Professor in-Charge of SINE, stated that, “While IIT Bombay has strong research output, SINE’s approach has focused on maintaining quality (in terms of robustness) and technical depth rather than expanding startup numbers rapidly”.

Unlike IIT Bombay, which does not provide a salary to professors who take leave for their entrepreneurial projects, IIT Delhi, under its FIRE (Faculty Innovation and Research Driven Entrepreneurship) scheme, provides one year of paid and two years of unpaid leave to its faculty building startups. However, Prof. Nishant informed Insight that paid sabbatical for professors pursuing research translation is currently in the works. IIT Delhi has also launched a PhD incubation centre recently to encourage students to research and develop start-up technologies. IT Madras has been historically among the deeptech hotspots of the country – in 2024–25 alone, IIT Madras incubated 104 deep-tech startups, over half founded by its own faculty and students. This has been possible because of multiple factors at play: excellent pre-incubation programs and strong support from the iTNT Hub (a local state-sponsored incubator), supplemented by a bustling Bengaluru-Chennai pipeline. But the primary success factors have been the IITM Research Park and the in-house incubator, which have created a very active environment for pushing faculty-led startups. Over time, this has created a stronger pipeline of professor-led entrepreneurial success stories for IITM and IITD, which in turn inspires more faculty to pursue similar paths. 

IIT Bombay, with its strong research base, is still in the process of establishing a reinforcing cycle of policy support and role models. For example, initiatives like rent-free office spaces for deeptech startups, provided by IISc, are something that Mumbai, in general, and SINE in particular, have been unable to match efficiently. SINE does offer space in the Rahul Bajaj Technology Innovation Centre building, but the facilities are limited, forcing them to selectively allocate them to only a few startups. While funding is always a challenge in the startup race, be it Mumbai or Delhi or Chennai, examples above signify that the initial impetus has to come from active institutional policies and targets that don’t just lay the ground but also join the dots – an incentive for faculty to move beyond the classroom and labs, economic and administrative cushioning for students to be able to contribute to these efforts, and matchmaking with the industry to take these ventures off the launchpad. SINE has seen only moderate successes here and is lagging in providing sound logistical backing to the incubatees, and structural reforms are necessary for us to catch up to our peers in the country. 

View of the World

The contrast between India’s deeptech ecosystem and global hubs is striking. This disparity in deep-tech innovation between institutions like MIT and Stanford and those in India predominantly lies due to structural differences. 

At MIT or Stanford, early funds are grant-based, equity is untouched until later, and support is structured to maximise experimentation rather than enforce accountability too early. IITB’s model, by comparison, frontloads financial pressure. This doesn’t just narrow the field of risk-takers; it also changes the kinds of problems people attempt to solve. Teams that might otherwise pursue a decade-long materials breakthrough instead drift toward safer B2B SaaS or service-led plays, simply because those models align better with the capital available.

The availability of patient capital also sets these ecosystems apart. Hong Kong Science & Technology Park, for instance, integrates incubation programs with research parks and industry clients, providing early-stage funding of around $100,000, often without taking equity, allowing startups to focus purely on product development. In this context, Titanium emerges as a promising step in that direction for the IITB ecosystem. 

Another argument that some make is that since the Industrial Revolution happened in the West, it has given them a first-mover advantage. Technology and innovation are ingrained in their way of life from early on, while in India, with low industry–academia interaction and limited R&D investment, that culture is still taking shape. As Prof. Yeramalli put it, “In the US, experiments move fast; in India, hurdles like vendors slow things down, and that’s why hands-on work here often loses its momentum.” Support from external factors affecting the scaling of lab research also becomes a contributor to hindrances in translation in India.  

Institutional frameworks make a big difference as well. Leading universities in the US often embed company-style R&D into their incubation structures, giving researchers a seamless path from lab to market. Structured IP policies, dedicated mentorship, and early access to funding remove many of the pain points that hinder nascent ventures. In global hubs, mechanisms like IPOs, acquisitions by large tech or defence firms, and robust pathways for monetising patents provide clear returns for investors. This clarity encourages more funding to flow into high-risk, long-horizon projects. 

In the US, it’s now common for faculty and students to venture into entrepreneurship. Mentorship networks, incubators, and success stories reinforce the belief that pursuing ambitious, long-term technology ventures is worthwhile.  This shows the importance of cultivating a directed mindset towards entrepreneurship.  Government and defence support further strengthen this ecosystem. Agencies like DARPA and NSF provide non-dilutive funding explicitly designed to absorb risk, giving founders the freedom to focus on research without worrying about immediate commercial outcomes. 

There is a flip side to this as well – the share of public and private funding in research plays a crucial role in determining the agility of the ecosystem. In 2024, IITB received nearly ₹700 Crores in research grants, of which 35% was from private sources, while the rest 65% was from public funding. This not only represented a significant uptick in funding but also the interest of private players in the fabled ‘industry-academia collaboration’. This balance is necessary as private funding encourages faster, higher-impact research translation. Public funding structures, though they support foundational science and non-commercial ventures, limit risk-taking and commercialisation because grants are typically oriented toward academic output. While the gross funding still remains significantly below that received at MIT and Stanford, the rising proportion by private sources at IITB has started mirroring the western counterparts, which is a welcome change.

Where We Are Headed

It has been clear for some time that we, as a country, have heavily relied on a service-based economy. Then why do we nevertheless emphasise the importance of more deeptech translation? If ‘services’ is our forte, then why dip our feet in muddy waters? It has to do a lot with how we are as a nation, and the place of IITB in it. India has, for long, been a country that has depended on imports for products and technologies higher up the value chain – from Chinese batteries to American electronics. But recent geopolitical events, from the breakdown of supply chains to wars, have indicated there needs to be a stronger push for reducing dependence on others for key technologies. 

The ‘push’ cannot appear out of thin air; it comes from a fundamental understanding that the success metrics of R&D funding need to be redefined in our ecosystem. Technological funding does not always manifest in successful big business ventures that create employment, but it almost always sparks a chain of innovation that affects society in broader ways. For example, there has been a growing consensus that manufacturing and hardware-based innovation have been driving factors for the economic growth of countries in the West and East Asia in the past, not just because of the jobs, but also because of the ‘spillover’ of technologies and the societal benefits they bring. A contemporary example of such spillover can be seen in the rise of the transformer architecture in AI, which was developed for the narrow task of improving machine translation. In just a few years, it has unexpectedly accelerated breakthroughs in drug discovery, protein modelling, materials science, climate forecasting, and even chip design. This underlines how research translation often creates value in sectors far removed from its original intent.

An appreciable effort towards non-commercial research translation is actually observed right here at IITB, under the aegis of the Tata Centre for Technology and Design (TCTD). Prof. Santosh Noronha, who leads TCTD, explains, 

“Not everything that the institute does is for-profit; a lot of research is also intended towards social impact. This corresponds to need-centric translation instead of technological problem solving”

With funding support from the Tata Trusts, TCTD supports teams that are primarily building products for societal benefit, which may not have a market and often rely on institutional subsidies. “The institute allows us to subvert the commercial aspect while still achieving the impact completely. We can leverage the flexibility of the institute, staying away from getting into a startup which comes with its own problems due to investor expectations”, as Prof. Noronha explains.

The lack of a commercial market isn’t always a hindrance, mainly because of two reasons – first, the government often establishes itself as the primary buyer in the interest of social uplifting, and secondly, while the product itself may have very niche applications, it creates an ecosystem of related services and products around it – so the it’s not just a product that’s rolled out, but a complete outlay. Prof. Noronha cited medical diagnostic gadgets rolled out at a fraction of the cost in hospitals, such as those for detecting cervical cancer, as examples.

India’s industrial economy needs a strong push to build deep-tech locally and take it to domestic and global markets, and IITs are expected to lead this shift. Understanding IIT Bombay’s readiness for this role is therefore essential. Despite various initiatives, IITB’s research-to-impact translation rate remains about 7%, far lower than peers like IIT Madras and IIT Delhi. IIT Bombay ranks 4th in NIRF 2024 for research and attracts substantial government and industry funding, yet much of this research still falls short of real-world application.

If we are to bring reforms in the state of research translation, we also need to consider the ambitions we express as an institute. They do more than just create media headlines – they shape the policy and mindset of the institute as well, and redefine what versions of success could look like, especially for their faculty. An interesting step in this direction has been the recent release of ‘IIT Bombay Strategy Plan: 2026-2030 & Beyond’. The document outlines several ambitious targets specific to research translation, with some notable ones being the establishment of a Commercialisation Office to license patents for market deployment, the realisation of 300 industry-funded PhDs per year, the development of a 100,000 sq. m ‘Innovation Park’, and the launch of 500 startups by 2030, among several others. With a structured future outlook and sustenance of desirable Initiatives like Project Titanium, IITB can assume a much stronger position at the forefront of innovation in the country.