IIT Madras is home to India’s largest deep-tech start-up ecosystem, with over 475 startups valued in excess of ₹50,000 crore.
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VELANKANNI RAJ B
Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has launched its School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for deep tech start-ups. It aims tomentor and back the next generation of deep tech start-up founders through structured curricular and academic support.
The school will offer a minor stream in entrepreneurship, an MS (Entrepreneurship) degree and also establish programmes contributing to translational research. It will also have a PhD programme and an ‘Entrepreneur-in-Residence’ (EIR) cohort to support returning professionals who want to pursue entrepreneurship as a career, says a release.
The school was inaugurated by V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, and will be headed by Prabhu Rajagopal, Founding Head of the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. A faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering in IITM, Rajagopal has previously led both the maker-space Centre for Innovation and the pre-incubator Nirmaan, the release said.
“As we progress after having achieved 1.2 patents a day and exceeding 100 start-ups in the last financial year, it is now time to institutionalise our innovation and entrepreneurship efforts. We have already introduced, in the second year of the B.Tech programme, a course on Entrepreneurship and System Building. Now, we will also have a minor. The PhD programme is very interesting. This is going to be another USP of IIT Madras,” said Kamakoti.
The institute also aims to create IIT Madras-specific funding mechanisms at the initiation and scale-up stages for start-ups andwill also run ‘IP clinics’ to help students understand the notion of IP filing, he added.
Meanwhile, IIT Madras is home to India’s largest deep-tech start-up ecosystem, with over 475 startups valued in excess of ₹50,000 crore.These start-ups have cumulatively created more than 11,000 jobs, filed over 700 patents and have attracted ₹12,000 crore in investments, the release said.
Published on August 7, 2025
