Imperial College, London, recently announced the establishment of its Indian hub in Bengaluru to strengthen scientists, educational and innovation partnerships between India and Britain, after San Francisco, Singapore and Arakara, its fourth international hub, Hub in Bangalore, Hub ‘Imperial Global India’ titled ‘Imperial Global India’ titled many colleagues with many colleagues with many colleagues with institutions titled IISC and NCBS with many colleagues like IISC and NCBs. Is.
The Academic Co-Director of Imperial Global India, Dr. Elena Dacman and Entrepreneurs’ Director of Entrepreneurship were in Bengaluru, Bengaluru, to participate in the ‘Climate Dialogue’ organized by the university in partnership with IIM Bangalore’s incubation branch NSRCL.
Hindu Caught with them to understand about the huge vision of the hub, how startups in both countries can benefit from such programs and how India is emerging as an important destination for global startups.
About Entrepreneur Program at Imperial College, London
Ben: Imperial Enterprise Lab is a dedicated support service for students, employees and entrepreneurs of alumni. We are basically to help any student who has an idea and wants to push it forward. It is not necessary to start your business, it is about being inventive, following your curiosity, and discovering an interesting idea.
Elena: We have a portfolio of various programs at graduate and postgraduate levels. And what we often see is, especially postgraduate students who do a master with us come from a lot of different countries. Therefore, it is highly international, and they often work in teams. This is actually the place where innovation occurs, because it almost gives them the confidence to detect things that are out of their comfort field.
Usually, our Indian students are the most entrepreneurship. So, it is fantastic to see, because you can always make sure that something will come from it.
Ben: We support more than 2,000 persons every year, work on about 500 ideas – projects, not companies. And then we see 30 to 40 start-ups emerging. This is from running more than 20 different programs and services.
Focus on the area of enterprise lab
Ben: This sector is like unknowable, as we are working with very initial stage ideas. Therefore, we all work in different types of ideas and fields. Although it is interesting that when you collect the kind of kinds and look at the programs we run, they are different in two strong themes.
One subject is health tech and med-tech. The other is actually the main subject clean technology.
Elena: In Clean Tech Space, it can be anything from behavioral change to waste recycling, new ways of energy storage, anything to protect the floods … it is not just related to energy; Our students are usually trying to solve really interesting top problems.
Can you talk about your association with Imperial Global India Hub and NSRCEL?
Ben: We are launching a global office in Bangalore. As part of the launch of the new hub, we choose to bring a startup to the UK that is interested in the Indian market, whether they are physically physically and connect them with people.
We get climate-technical start-ups from the UK, all of which expressed strong interest in the Indian market. In NSRCEL, this program is about the founders who are capable of pitching audiences of NSRCEL stakeholders. It is not necessary to increase investment, but to talk about what they are doing and to find out if anyone can help in the room or combine them with someone.
Elena: I think India will feel more and more of our start-ups that India is a great destination to enter the venture. At the same time, I think the UK can also be very interesting for Indian start-ups.I hope that things will now rise with the trade agreement, that we are going to see more dynamic rules, that the obstacles of entry have decreased and we can exchange more intensive exchanges between the two countries and our innovation ecosystems.
Do you already see a trend?
Elena: I can tell you with my observation, we have about 900 Indian students at the Imperial College at this time. And many of them are very entrepreneurs and come to us. Then they see that there is a big possibility in India because you have the best software engineer, best data scientists and amazing coders. They can potentially increase their start-ups faster than the UK. So often they go back to India, to detect more economic manufacturing, and launch their start-ups in India. This is also happening naturally because we are now increasing the number of Indian students.
Ben: Post-Brexit is a real inspiration on globally driving development. Therefore, we are focused on a renewed and can grow internationally when we help people start here.
What do you think about the role of emerging technologies to help you address climate and public health challenges globally, in Britain or in India?
Elena: I was in a research project at Varanashi Farms in Mangalore. It is an innovation form, and they weigh soil engineering using microbiology. My belief is that India is very rich in innovation of Agritech and sustainable farming. It is really impressive. I would just say as an observation from the area.
Ben: We went for decades without a global epidemic. And suddenly we realized that it could strike at any time. UNTAP is a startup that has developed incredible goods. They have developed a device that will analyze wastewater coming out of buildings for a full range of pathogens and viruses. This provides real -time data to building managers about the risk profile. These types of innovations need to help us protect us from future challenges.
About other partnership in Bengaluru/India
Elena: We have a mou with IISC and we want to expand on it with various research initiatives. We are also trying to do more work with their enterprise lab.
Our educationists are already working with a lot of researchers in IITs and other Indian Research Institutes. We are trying to expand those cooperations and support them to move forward. A lot of things are happening, but there was no idea of a hub, which is finally happening now.
There is also a new cooperation with NCB to facilitate AI and Science Global Fellowship. Two Fellow will work between NCBS and Imperial College, but it is more on the research side.
In the context of student cooperation, we are trying to add more venture laboratories. We are actually eager to connect innovation ecosystem.
Ben: We run a program called Global Challenge Lab, with about 25 universities partners. We have worked with the Institute of Technology, Madras and the Indian students of that institution are coming to the Global Challenge Lab program. There have been many such activities, but the hub actually helps to focus, create more connections and generate more activity.
The specifics of partnership with NSRCEL?
Elena: In the meeting with NSRCEL, one of the things we really discussed was the empowerment of female entrepreneurs. And this is also something that the enterprise lab is promoting with Hum Innovat.
Ben: This is a wonderful program for women -led startups. We have been doing this for 10 years. NSRCEL is also really strong in supporting female entrepreneurs. Therefore, we would like to cooperate on the subject and will expand what we are doing in the UK
Going forward, will you be looking at more subjects?
Elena: For Imperial Global India Hub, there are actually three different topics at the moment – climate and clean technology, health and emerging technology, including quantum AI and machine learning.
What is a big vision for the hub?
Ben: I think the big vision for the global hub is that we have already started, to increase it and speed it up. Educational cooperation, research cooperation, association with corporate industrial partners and involvement in ecosystems are all important because it is about exchanging the best practices worldwide to support future startups.
We would prefer to see the hub a portal in the UK or London for Indian startups. Similarly, we would like to see it as a drain for startups to come to the UK