Startups partner with IITs to develop cutting-edge niche products

Incubation cells at the premier engineering institutes are helping more and more startups develop innovative product

That Indian soldiers function under the most gruelling conditions in places like the Siachen glacier, desert regions or in submarines several leagues under the sea, is well known. But one issue that few pause to consider is how they manage to maintain personal hygiene in such inhospitable terrain, where there is little or no infrastructure, and where water resources are scarce at best or entirely absent at worst.

A large part of this problem has been solved by Gurugram-based startup Clensta Technologies, which has developed a waterless bath solution and a waterless toothpaste in collaboration with IIT-Delhi (IIT-D). The bathing solution, which consists of a body wash and shampoo in two separate packs, requires no rinsing with water and easily rubs off skin or hair after use.

IIT-D has a small sweat equity stake in Clensta Technologies, which was set up in 2016 by IIM-Calcutta alumnus Puneet Gupta.

Says Gupta, “The product is not only useful for soldiers in the Army and Navy, but also for patients with head injuries or in other parts of the body. Application of water on the wound would only worsen it, especially if the water is contaminated, which is often the case in smaller hospitals. The product is also used by doctors who need to wash their hands several times a day.”

Gupta, who claims that a user needs no more than a 20 ml spray of the product, says that they are now improving it by adding mosquito repellents and other anti-microbial properties to it. He adds that Clensta sells about 200,000 such solutions a month.

The research and development (R&D) tie-up between IIT-D and Clensta is one of the many collaborations that Indian startups have been entering into with premier engineering institutes.

The frontrunner

IIT-Madras (IIT-M) has been a frontrunner in the area of startup incubation and mentorship. Its incubation cell has a portfolio of over 255 startups founded by over 500 entrepreneurs, according to Dr Tamaswati Ghosh, CEO, IIT-M incubation cell. She says, “The peer-to-peer network here is exceptionally strong, and encompasses sharing knowhow and tech along with support in other forms. Many of the mature startups also play the role of mentors for our early-stage enterprises.”

It is this expertise and network that startups are interested in when they look for a tie-up with a premier engineering institute. The other reason is to help share the cost of setting up such high-end R&D infrastructure. For Clensta’s Gupta, setting up the R&D facility for his product would have been a very expensive proposition if he were to do it on his own.

“There is also the element of faith in institutes of IITs’ stature,” which invariably attracts the attention of investors, says Gupta.

For the institutes, this is also an opportunity to invest in promising tech ideas. More often than not, the institute takes some stake in the company.

One such company that IIT-M’s incubation cell helped is Xyma Analytics, which develops sensor products and solutions for hazardous and hostile environments in industrial plants. It was set up by Nishanth Raja, who has a PhD in mechanical engineering from Anna University. IIT-M’s incubation cell has taken a 7 per cent stake in the company.

Especially beneficial

These tie-ups are especially beneficial when it comes to deep-tech or hi-tech startups. Raja says the ultrasonic waveguide-based sensor technology that IIT-M helped his firm develop assists industries to continuously monitor their process parameters with industrial IoT. This is much superior to conventional process sensors.

His technology supports a wide range of industries such as metals, refineries, chemical plants, fertiliser units and temperature-controlled storage industries.

“The IIT-M incubation cell played a prominent role in accelerating our business, GTM strategy and technology readiness and connected us to industry and plant experts in the field of instrumentation, process engineers, inspection and material specialists,” says Raja.

IIT Guwahati (IIT-G), too, has been helping startups with R&D for new products. For example, it has developed a device to detect urinary tract infection (UTI) in the early stages of infection for Altanostics Labs (earlier known as BioAptagen Laboratories), an Assam-based startup co-founded by Dr Swapnil Sinha.

Dr Sinha says that the device has two components -- biology and nanotechnology. The biological part has been developed by Altanostics Labs, while IIT-G has developed the detection device using nanotechnology and electronics.

Dr Dipankar Bandyopadhyay, professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Centre for Nanotechnology, IIT-G, and head of the School of Health Sciences and Technology, adds: “The kit is a portable device designed to provide rural health care to the ‘last-mile’ population.”

The test results on this device are available within minutes on a smartphone, compared to about 48 hours in a conventional diagnosis, says Dr Sinha.

Each kit is priced at about Rs5,000, and Dr Bandyopadhyay says the market for the device in rural areas is huge, given that there are over 600,000 villages in India.

“We have tested the device on patients and it is giving good results. We are in the process of applying for an intellectual property and need a whole lot of government approvals before we can commercialise it,” says Dr Sinha, adding that her  company will apply to the Indian Council of Medical Research and other accreditation agencies before rolling out the product in, say, about a year.

Another instance of a startup using IIT-G’s R&D capability to come up with commercially viable products is Primary Healthcare, founded in 2018 by IIT-G alumnus Sahil Jagnani. He collaborated with his alma mater to come up with Magic Box, a device that helps detect lifestyle diseases. For Jagnani, collaborating with IIT-G also meant launching a product that was suitable for the Indian market.

“We are thinking of launching this device with a price range of Rs10,000, which is about a twentieth of the cost of the kind of sophisticated equipment that most of the larger hospitals use,” he added. It is a battery-driven device in which the technology is similar to the UTI detection device, says IIT-G’s Dr Bandyopadhyay, who adds that the broader plan is to integrate cardiac and thyroid tests into the system.

For startups with a deep-tech focus, such collaborations with premier engineering institutes will become crucial in the coming years. In the fourth quarter of CY21, 15 per cent of the deals by volume catered to startups leveraging deep-tech solutions. And this represented around 2.6 per cent of the $7.2 billion raised in Q4 of CY21, according to a report by Nasscom and PGA Labs.