CREST of IIT Madras was launched recently to provide academic and thought leadership in innovation, entrepreneurship and risk capital.

CREST (Centre for Research on Start-Ups and Risk Financing) of IIT Madras will also create a unique world-class data repository on Indian start-ups and ventures to address a major hurdle for engaging in high-quality research.

This information resource would be made accessible for researchers and policymakers that can result in top-tier publications.

CREST of IIT Madras is for great startups and risk financing

What is the vision of CREST of IIT Madras? To be a gloglobally recognized as a leading centre of research engaged in scholarly research in the areas of creation, development and financing of innovation, start-ups and entrepreneurship.

CREST of IIT Madras also wishes to takeup cross country collaborative research resulting in the use of unique data sets on start-ups and venture capital that increases the chances of breakthrough findings.

The other vision of CREST of IIT Madras is to take up evidence synthesis on the start-up and innovation ecosystem to inform policymakers and practitioners.

Professor Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School delivered the keynote address during the inauguration of CREST of IIT Madras.

Entrepreneurs with great ideas in developing countries cannot rely on the usual trust-building foundations – law, regulatory oversight, and government projects, as they might in the developed world, said Professor Tarun.

Assuming the existence of these phantom factors predisposes ventures not to succeed at scale. Instead, smart entrepreneurs in these countries need a mindset shift, focusing not only on creating but also the conditions to create these, he said during the inaugural of CREST of IIT Madras.

Professor Tarun further said there is a need to build trust between Scientists and business leaders.

Amazing technology is coming out of the labs but the condition to get the maximum out of such innovations is not there.

IIT Madras director Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi delivered the presidential address during the inauguration of CREST of IIT Madras.

These research initiatives we (IIT Madras) are creating, almost all of them, have very strong international collaborative connections, said Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi.

‘We are knitting together partnerships with leading groups across the world.’

We want to have strong flow of people and ideas. We will have the interactions in online mode till the pandemic gets over, said Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi delivering the presidential address at the inauguration of CREST of IIT Madras.

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The key mission of CREST of IIT Madras would be to engage in scholarly research encompassing the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship, and risk capital.

The data repository being developed on innovation, venturing and risk capital will create the infrastructure to carry out high-quality research.

The creation of entrepreneurship specific language models will facilitate a better understanding of the entities in the ecosystem while facilitating the use of latest research in AI, ML to generate new insights.

Professor A. Thillai Rajan, principal investigator at CREST of IIT Madras said the role of higher education institutions in the area of start-ups and entrepreneurship is four-fold.

The first is the creation of intellectual property that can be commercialized through start-ups.

The second is to train for entrepreneurship through various formal and unstructured programs.

The third is to provide a nurturing environment for start-ups by setting up incubators and providing access to various facilities to young start-ups.

The fourth is to generate insights through rigorous research that can inform and guide policy making and practice, he said during the inauguration of CREST of IIT Madras.

Giving an overview of CREST of IIT Madras he further said while substantial progress has been achieved in the first three, much needs to be done on the fourth.

CREST of IIT Madras is a big step in that direction. The timing cannot be more apt. Start-ups have been playing a very critical role in different walks of life during the pandemic period.

Therefore, a research centre that helps to enhance the success of start-ups through appropriate policy formulation or managerial decision making is even more relevant now than even before, said Professor Thillai Rajan.

CREST of IIT Madras would also push for use of evidence to guide policymaking.

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CREST of IIT Madras will synthesize existing evidence as well as generate new evidence-based on unique data sets from organizations in the start-up ecosystem such as incubators, investor networks, government missions, and so on.

Such grounded research can help to generate novel findings, that are likely to interest high impact journals.

CREST of IIT Madras has current projects, and they are:

Book Project – Shifting Orbits: Decoding the trajectory of the Indian Start-up Ecosystem (Thillai Rajan A, IIT Madras, Srivardhini K. Jha, IIM Bangalore, Joffi Thomas, IIM Kozhikode, Rohan Chinchwadkar, IIT Bombay)

Research Studies

o Role and Effect of Corporate Venture Capital Investments: Evidence from Indian Corporations (Arushi Gupta, IIT Madras)

o Angel investors in India: Does the start-up stage matter? (A. Niroopa Rani, IIT Madras)

o Performance of Start-up Incubators: Do host organizations matter? (Abhishek Gupta, IIT Madras)

o Entrepreneurship at the Grass Roots: Challenges faced by Rural Women Entrepreneurs of Tamil Nadu (Aarthi Ramachandran, IIT Madras)

Pooja Singh

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