Alumni Funds IIT Madras - Innovation Centre with $5 Million
The centre will take up two or three entrepreneurial and innovative initiatives every year and play a role of an angel investor, i.e., invest in time, energy and fund.
S. Kris Gopalakrishnan, Gururaj Deshpande and Jaishree Deshpande have joined hands together and launched a centre for innovation and entrepreneurship at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras on January 11, 2017. The centre has been named as Gopalakrishnan-Deshpande Centre, and it will get a funding of $5 million spanning over the next five years.
The new centre will take up two or three entrepreneurial as well as innovative initiatives every year and play a role of an angel investor, i.e., invest in time, energy and fund. Each and every programme that will be taken up by the centre will stand on its own if successful and the centre will not play any role in it after it is up and running.
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The centre will have entrepreneurial professionals who have solid experience and make students and teachers find necessary assistance for transforming their out-of-box ideas into reality.
Director of IIT Madras, Bhaskar Ramamurthi expressed that the centre has been created at the right time to provide a boost to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in IIT-M.
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Chairman of Axilor Ventures, Kris Gopalakrishnan revealed that the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem at IIT-M will enhance the opportunity to learn from the global network of similar centres spread over various countries. There will be a great opportunity for the research community to collaborate with other researchers across the global network.
The centre will also be a part of a robust network of around 100 institutions which are a part of annual Deshpande Symposium for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.