The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) has established the Centre for Research on Start-Ups and Risk Financing (CREST) to conduct research on innovation, entrepreneurship, and risk capital, particularly in India's startup sector.

The institute announced on Wednesday that CREST would be established to conduct scholarly research in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship, and risk capital. A repository of data on Indian startups, ventures, and investors will be established and made available to startups, investors, and policymakers.

“There are several aspects of the Indian startup ecosystem that need to be studied. For example, looking at the factors that are crucial for decision making for investors when they back a startup or examining the mortality among startups to understand what worked for them and what didn’t. While there are many incubators across major educational and research institutes, we aim to also study how effective these incubators have been,” said A Thillai Rajan, principal investigator, CREST, and professor, Department of Management Studies at IIT-M.

The findings of the research will assist startups, investors, and policymakers in making quick decisions. Higher education institutions play four roles in the field of start-ups and entrepreneurship. 

The first step is to develop intellectual property that can be commercialised through startups. The second step is to prepare for entrepreneurship through a variety of structured and unstructured programmes.

The third goal is to create a nurturing environment for startups by establishing incubators and providing young startups with access to various facilities. The fourth goal is to conduct rigorous research to generate insights that can inform and guide policymaking and practise. While significant progress has been made in the first three, much more work remains to be done in the fourth.

Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director, IIT-Madras, said, “These research initiatives we (IIT Madras) are creating, almost all of them, have very strong international collaborative connections. We are knitting together partnerships with leading groups across the world. We want to have a strong flow of people and ideas. We will have the interactions in online mode till the pandemic gets over.”

While the center's primary focus is research, Rajan stated that one of the center's goals is to increase cross-country research collaborations. “If we find an international collaborator and there is a need for some courses,” he adds, “we may plan such courses as well.”

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