Industry-academia partnership

Recently, coal India inked an moU withtwo Indian Institutes of management –mumbai and Sambalpur – to collaborate

with cIL on the subject of coal transportation,in particular multimodal connectivity infra-structure. multimodal connectivity will notonly help in reducing logistic costs but also inimproving efficiency. Under this initiative a one-year PGP Executive programme in Logistics andOperations, will also be conducted for executivesof coal India and its numerous subsidiaries.

This is indeed a laudable step, and hopefully,other PSUs as well as the private sector will beinspired to ink similar collaborations with aca-demia. In time, this will also provide a boostto the GDP. Like public-private partnerships inother sectors, industry-academia partnershipsin India have not yet taken off in a significantway. These collaborations will provide universi-ties with a ready platform for commercialisingstudent research. This can be achieved throughlicensing agreements, patents, or even by allow-ing new start-ups to emerge. Instead of relyingon angel funding or venture capital, this enter-prise will enable researchers to flourish. The timetaken by start-ups to validate their ideas andmove to the next level will be replaced by thecorporate sector, which will provide practicalknowledge to the start-ups.

a marriage of academia and industry willalso give rise to several innovations and allowacademics to test their knowledge in a practi-cal manner. Industry will be able to develop newtechnologies and have an opportunity to accessnew technologies as well. Employing new stu-dents as interns will also provide students withexposure to industry, helping them understandthe importance of meeting deadlines and assess-ing risk-reward outcomes.

While industry-academia partnerships arequite prevalent in the US, UK, and many otherleading economies, India still lags behind. Onereason for this is the relatively lower spending onr&D. In 2022, India spent around $65 billion onr&D, while the US spent 10 times that amount,china over $500 million, Japan three times, andGermany two times this amount annually. as apercentage of GDP, India ’s r&D is less than 0.6per cent. Even smaller countries like South Koreaallocate 4.5 per cent of their GDP to r&D. Swe-den, Switzerland, and Germany allocate morethan 3 per cent for this purpose. It should also benoted that the bulk of the r&D is contributed b the government and not the private sector. This is a reverse of the phenomenon in other coun-tries. Indian industry has to start investing morein r&D. While larger companies can afford to inkpartnerships for the long term, other companiescan also explore short-term collaboration withuniversities to get solutions for specific problems.

One major challenge facing industries regard-ing r&D investment is the fear of failure. What ifthe r&D projects where funds are allocated fail?While failures are undesirable, it is crucial for bothindustries and researchers to embrace them. Onlythrough this acceptance will there be genuine col-laborations between academia and industry, fos-tering better innovations. If Indian researchers areoffered the same facilities and remuneration onpar with those provided by universities overseasthere would be no incentive for students to leaveour shores and try their luck elsewhere.

Of course, the government is trying to foster partnerships through initiatives like the Scheme for Promoting academia and research collabora-tion (SParc) and Indian Innovation and Growth Programme (IIGP), among others. however, it isup to the industry to take the initiative. The pri-vate sector could consider funding colleges anduniversities to conduct research in specific areas.There are more than enough sectors that require collaboration including carbon composites, car-bon fibres, fibre reinforced polymers for usage inconstruction, graphene, new compounds.

active government funds can indeed catalyse transformative changes in countries. Denmark'sproactive research initiatives and government policies catapulted it to global leadership in windpower. By incentivising private companies and individuals to establish power turbines and feed electricity into the national grid at a fixed rate,Denmark experienced rapid growth in renewable energy. Presently, nearly 50 per cent of its energy consumption is sourced from wind power. Sim-ilarly, following the oil crisis, Brazil emerged asone of the largest producers of ethanol, signif-icantly reducing its reliance on imported oil,which had been draining its finances. Brazil pio-neered the development of flex-fuel and hybridvehicles capable of running on either gasoline orethanol. Energy is an area in India that is in des-perate need of targeted research and investment.

While government and its PSU companies focuson researching with academia and setting long termmega goals, it is in the interest of industries to con-sider inking more agreements with universities