IIT Madras to incubate 100 start-ups in 2024

IIT Madras is targeting incubating at least 100 start-ups across various sectors next year, in 2024. Recognised as one of the top deep-tech start-up ecosystems in India, the IIT Madras Incubation Cell (IITMIC) is the institute’s umbrella body for nurturing, supporting, and overseeing various innovation and entrepreneurship projects.

Sharing his targets for 2024, Prof V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “IIT Madras saw a lot of ambitions realised during 2023. In the past year, we took up several important projects including IITM Zanzibar Campus, which became the first-ever IIT to be established overseas, launched a Department of Medical Sciences and Technology, and are aspiring to do many more things in this direction. We are also looking forward to launching a new school on interdisciplinary sciences. It is very important as today, we are moving towards interdisciplinary education. We also want to close this financial year with the maximum amount of projects.”

Prof Kamakoti said that in 2024, the institute has a lot more exciting initiatives and socially relevant projects that would greatly benefit the nation. “We are looking at closing this financial year (March 31, 2024) with 366 patents. We will try our best to see one patent a day. It is a matter of great pride at IIT Madras that we do a lot more of innovation. We are also looking at starting 100 start-ups in 2024. We are also seeing a lot of interesting technologies coming up through Hyperloop start-up, ePlane, Agnikul Cosmos and Mindgrove Technologies, all of which are IIT Madras-incubated start-ups. These start-ups will deliver products, which will be of great national importance,” he said.

He further added, “We are also working very hard towards maintaining the 1 ranking in NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework). Hopefully, we are also looking to move to higher rankings in World Rankings as well. We want to start a couple of new courses in IITM Zanzibar.”