IIT Madras Gopalakrishnan-Deshpande Centre trains 2nd cohort of entrepreneurs under I-NCUBATE program

NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 15: The Gopalakrishnan-Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (GDC) at Indian Institute of Technology Madras has completed the second cohort under its flagship I-NCUBATE program, which enables faculty, researchers and entrepreneurs to commercialise their technological ideas aimed at creating societal impact at scale.

The ‘Finale’ of the second cohort, which comprised ten teams having deep-tech ideas from diverse areas including Healthcare, E-commerce, Environment, and Industrial sectors, was held at the IIT Madras. With this cohort, GDC has curated 17 start-up ideas and coached over 100 scientists and students in entrepreneurial thinking. The I-NCUBATE program involves guiding the teams to validate their business ideas through a customer discovery exercise and providing guidance for formulating a coherent Business Model for the start-up venture

Delivering the Chief Guest address during the Finale of I-NCUBATE, Raju Venkatraman, Founder and CEO, Medall Healthcare said, “GDC is a well thought out initiative and it has a structured approach to help budding entrepreneurs. India will benefit immensely with such a support system for entrepreneurial grooming and development.”

All the teams were unanimous in their appreciation of the transformative experience and learning that I-NCUBATE has provided them in their entrepreneurial journeys.

Delivering a video message on the Vision for GDC, Dr. Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande said, “India is now investing more and more funds in research. It is imperative for the researchers in the country to have economic and social impact with the new ideas they generate. I-NCUABTE’s primary mission is to connect researchers to the marketplace in a methodical way so that the chances of impact from research is enhanced. This is based on a proven methodology at the Deshpande Center at MIT and I-CORP program at NSF in USA.”

The I-NCUBATE program is a seven-week engagement where teams, each comprising a Faculty Lead, an Entrepreneur Lead, and a Mentor, come together as a cohort under the GDC umbrella and go through a customer-discovery exercise with their respective business ideas.