Pune: Venture Center, the Technology Business Incubator for science-driven enterprises in India, announced a partnership with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) to support capacity-building efforts aimed at strengthening technology transfer offices in Indian institutions, to increase commercialization of innovations.
It is envisaged that this will improve industry-academia collaborations in research, development, and deployment, leading to co-design and co-development of innovative products and solutions.
Venture Centre’s engagement comes in the backdrop of UNIDO and BEE’s ongoing project in India, ‘Facility for Low Carbon Technology Deployment (FLCTD)’. This project has supported early-stage and late-stage climate-tech start-ups to provide innovative solutions for industrial and commercial sectors.
The unique approach evolved in the FLCTD project to ‘de-risk’ innovations has helped over 30 climate tech start-ups in commercializing their products and solutions.
In addition, the FLCTD project is exploring ways to strengthen the technology transfer function in higher education institutes and research and development laboratories so that Indian industries benefit from the research in the domain of science and technology.
To share the learnings of technology ‘de-risking’ and ‘commercialization of innovations’ with technology transfer centers, UNIDO and BEE have engaged Venture Center to develop and implement a handbook and a series of a training programme on Technology Transfer function aimed at the practitioners, start-up, faculty and research and development personnel and government officials.
Sandeep Tandon, National Project Manager, FLCTD Project, UNIDO, said, “We are very pleased to have Venture Center as a partner in the FLCTD project implemented by UNIDO together with BEE.
Climate change is a global threat, and innovative technological solutions will be needed in the coming years and decades in all sectors of the economy to reduce the energy and environmental footprints.
Building on the experiences in climate tech innovation and over a decade of the stellar record of Venture Center, this partnership will bring forth a unique and foundational capacity-building programme that will benefit the research, technology transfer professionals and start-ups alike.
Venture Center shall implement this effort over the next ten months with the help of international and national experts and experienced technology transfer professionals.
The senior mentors shall include Dr Ashley Stevens (ex-Boston University), Dr John Fraser (ex-Florida State University and Simon Fraser University) and Dr Richard Cahoon (ex-Cornell University) – all Past Presidents and Senior Members of the American Association of University Technology Managers.
Dr V. Premnath, Founder Director of Venture Center, said, “We are excited to partner with UNIDO and BEE to raise the knowledge and case study experiences of Indian tech transfer offices. This will be critical as India transforms into an innovation-led economy in the coming years!
Translation and deployment of research-based technologies from academic organisations will be important to address society's most important problems in the coming years, including climate change, energy security, food security, affordable health, etc., and tech transfer professionals will be key playmakers!”