Prof. Rohit Srivastava on Why India Needs 10x Innovation to Beat China

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Q1 Mentors Who Shaped My Vision for India

Swami (00:19.95)

I just wanted to first talk to you about your mentors and who are your mentors and what were you inspired by and what are the life principles that you learned from them?

Prof Rohit Srivastava (00:52.703)

Yeah, thank you very much for the question. think that’s a very, important question in anyone’s life because when one moves forward, one tends to appreciate the role of mentors more and more because that is how you have reached where you have. Right. So when I came back to India, I had only one thing in my mind to work for India. And if you really want to work for India, you have to find people who have worked for India all their lives and that’s how I picked my mentors. I may not have worked under them, but there were three people who made a huge impact on my life and career. And in the order that they did, this was:

Professor Manju Sharma, who was the former DBT secretary. And then of course she went on to get several recognitions, including the Padma Bhushan. 

Professor G Padmanavan, who was the former ISC director, he’s also got several recognitions, including the Vigyan Ratna very recently.

and 

Dr. Renu Swaroop, who was again the former DBT secretary, but then who was the chairman of BIRAC when I first met her. 

So these were people who were doing what India needed at that time, and they were thinking ahead for India. And that’s how my thinking changed in the sense that if three of these people could influence so many people across the country, Hhow could I sitting in a place like IIT Bombay access to so many students, access to an infrastructure which is unparalleled anywhere in the world in that sense, could also do a similar sort of work. And that’s how I got, you know, mentored by these people sitting in the same committees, learning from them every day and figuring out what I could do different for India. And that’s how I picked this field is because this is the only field, I am talking about education, am talking about technology development, where the more you teach somebody to become technologists, the more they become useful for the country and the country benefits.

Q2 India’s Forward-Thinking Academic Leaders

Swami (03:00.152)

So when you say work for India and when you’re inspired by such people, one thing that I wanted to ask you is what made them work for India and what was the inspiration behind doing this? Because you can go outside India and do many things, right? So what made them do it and what did you see as say the character and discipline that they brought in and the passion and purpose that they had in their lives to inspire somebody like you.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (03:34.015)

Again, again, a terrific question in the sense that it’s very difficult to answer this in a sentence, but I’ll try. 

People like Dr. Manju Sharma, Professor Padmanavan, Dr. Suru, were forward thinkers. And that’s what I believe this country needs. You have to think what the country will need 20 years down the line or 30 years down the line. And they were already thinking what or where the country will be in 2047. That is what the Honorable Prime Minister is now talking every day about different ministries in the sense that we figure out where we want to be. Do we want to be as a developing nation or do we want to be a developed nation? And I guess that put these people apart because they were thinking how we could rid India of all the imports… that currently India pays, you know, at this moment we pay about 90,000 crores to import medical devices. It was more than a lakh crore and it was more than 90% of all medical devices when I started my career. It has come down. Maybe in the next 20 years, because of the progressive thinking of these people, it can come down significant amount. What put these people apart was their willingness to train younger faculty and younger people in the nation. See, this is something that I have rarely seen in people. I hope people forgive me for saying this, rarely I’ve seen in senior very successful people where they tend not to help the younger generation. 

And I have seen that being opposite in these people. And of course, there was Professor Bhan, you who was the secretary of DBT when I joined the country. Many people, you know, at those times who have made significant impact in this country. And very recently, Professor Ashutosh Sharma, who just got the Padma Shri. People like them have helped so many people in their career, have made the career of so many of us that all of us are now in tune with one vision, which is a Viksit Bharat. And how do we get there is something that all of us can contribute. And this is what I keep going to places everywhere around the country and saying only one thing. If I can do it, sitting in a small lab like mine with a very simple education like mine, not even an IIT and how can people sitting in all these different places in India make a difference?

Q3 Making Maximum Impact with Minimum Resources

Swami (06:01.87)

So what would they do, Professor, to inspire people like you? Because the real challenge is, you know, we talk about infrastructure, we talk about funding. For example, when I was going through the research work for this conversation, somebody like the US, a country like the US, the federal government pumps in like a hundred billion dollars, okay, for R&D and we don’t have those kinds of budget. So therefore, when you really look at these people without budget, without the kind of backing and the infrastructure, what made them do this and how would they really do this frugal engineering, I were to call it a drive. So how do they manage to do it, which is, I believe, one of the most important things that you must talk about in this conversation.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (06:55.463)

I agree. And again, you know, since you brought out the term frugal engineering, let me again point out another person,Professor Anil Gupta, who’s the master of frugal engineering. He set up a network of people who come from the grassroots level, do innovation and actually are able to take it forward. But because of people like Professor Anil Gupta. Now, when you brought out this point is how did these people actually make it possible in a country like ours where funding is not that generous. It comes in pockets and places, but it’s never in the tune of millions of dollars or even billions of dollars.

I think one thing that our country has is manpower, which no other country, I will say this, putting my sort of hands down on this thing, I went to US, I got an education from US, the Indians are the best. They have the best training possible. They have the best brains possible, but they are not seeing the opportunity that this country has to offer. And there are a few of us who started coming back in the early 2000s from the US who found mentors like them, who saw that there is an opportunity in India to use the limited resources that India has to offer and in fact create a bigger sort of impact. And that we’ve done, we’ve learned from these people. They have shown us how even, you know… $50,000, I’m just talking in terms of dollars because this conversation might be anywhere in the world, but just a $50,000 can lead to a product. 

And we’ve seen this happen with initiatives from BIRAK, from B I G, from startup schemes, from TDB, DST, and ICMR, where people are taught to use as less resources as possible, use maximum manpower available to us and deliver the maximum. 

I think this is something that I have learned from these people.

Q4 Patents vs Papers: The Future of Innovation

Swami (08:55.662)

Taking a leaf out of what you just said, as you build this prolific work of what you have done over the last many years, one thing that I can see and I did read about this is this whole passion of yours and I would say the mission of yours, which is to say paper versus patents, right? And that’s something that I saw something very very different from any academician that I would have actually come across in the research that I did. So tell me this whole thing about you know the power of patents and the patent power that can add to what you are doing.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (09:44.821)

Once again, a question that I think every youngster should really pay attention to because…

…each one of us is taught during our PhDs to publish, publish and publish. No one is taught to patent, patent and patent. When I came back to India, I had one person who I admired and this person still works at MIT. He is the father of bioengineering, Professor Robert Langer. He, at that point, when I came back to India, he already had 1000 patents to his name. And this is unparalleled even today, he has not been beat by anybody else in the world. So I took that one leaf out of his book and said that if a person sitting in one of the best institutes in the world can file 1000 patents, can I sitting in the best institute in India, file at least half of that number over my career. And this is over a career spanning 40 years that Prof. Langer has been working in this in US, or maybe 50 years now. You will not believe me, but in 20 years, we are already at a quarter of that number. So we’ve already filed about 250. 

And I keep saying to everybody, patents are what will make or break a technology in the future. If you have a patent around that technology, there’ll be nobody who will come near you because India is the biggest market. We don’t even need to go to US. We don’t need to go to Europe. If I can stay in India and make a product for India, protect it in India, I think that’s the way to go for the future. I do not want, I do not even want a product of mine to be sold in the US or the Europe. I’m not even, you know, propagating for that. If it happens, very good. If it does not happen, I’m happy that it could make a difference for India. But if you want to do that, you have to teach your students to first file the patent and then publish a paper. 

Now I’ll give you an example. If I have filed 250, I have also published 250. In fact, more than that. So maybe 300 publications, vis-a-vis 250 patents. If that’s the number that one lab can do in India, which has brought India to sixth in the innovation index in this world, because in patent filing and innovations and many other factors which are now coming out in the world, I think every lab has some contribution to make. If every lab files about 50 patents over their sort of career, I think India will be number one in the world in no time.

Q5 Why Product-First Thinking Changes Everything

Swami (12:13.976)

So when you talk about filing a patent…

I saw some interesting statistics around say the US universities. For example, the University of California was probably last year the highest in terms of filing a patent versus an MIT, which probably had about 402 patents. And India, for example, when I…looked at the track record since I spoke to you and since I started understanding the subject. We were at between 1958 to 2017… our universities really filed only 392 patents. And then it started accelerating and last year alone we filed close to 90,000 patents. So what does it take to file a patent and what is the mindset needed to have a patent oriented thinking.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (13:22.133)

So one thing I think I need to make clear, there has to be one innovative component in what a person is doing. That one component could be a process, it could be a product, it could be both. And that is how patents are filed. Now, if we were to work with an industry from the beginning, or we were to look at a bio design process where we look at needs coming out of hospitals, and then filtering those needs to come to a need that one needs to follow to get to a proof of concept, to a prototype, to a product, then I’ll guarantee you that there’ll be a patent out of this process. Because you have first of all figured out where the gaps are, then you have figured out whether those gaps are worth pursuing or not, whether they have a market. And once you’ve done that, then whatever you do to bridge that gap will lead to a patent.

And I have seen this happen for several companies because most large companies like Google, like Apple continue filing patents. And then you have seen that from data in these countries, all the large companies continuously file patents. And they file patents because they know that these are innovations that are going to move forward into a product improvement in the future. For us, what matters is that when we give projects to our PhD students or our master students. Let’s keep that one thing in mind. Are we getting a product at the end of their work? Are we getting a new process at the end of their work? If either of this is true, then filing a patent becomes easy because the moment you file these as claims in the patent or you don’t even file them, you just write a manuscript for it and submit it to a patent office, they will figure out the claims against what exists. They will be able to file a patent and you will actually get the benefit of it maybe for the next 15 to 20 years.

Q6 The Product-First Mindset Behind Innovation

Swami (15:19.118)

So one of the things that I want you to dive a little deeper is this whole product thinking which leads to patent thinking, right? Because India largely is a services economy, right? And if you want to move into a product economy, then what you’re really talking about is really a patent thinking because then you are actually looking at how do you file…patents in your area, it’s you know, it’s in biotechnology. So I understand that. But clearly, if you want to have a product first thinking, then you have to understand the market and then look at what are the products that can fill the need gap is really what you’re talking and then it can become a paper. So the thinking is around product first thinking is really what you’re talking. Am I right in understanding what you said?

Prof Rohit Srivastava (16:07.157)

You’re absolutely right. Absolutely right. In fact, it starts very early in my lab. Every student that we’ve taken so far have been given a need statement. And if they cannot find a need in the market, then we actually help them get there. But with that need, they always identify a product that exists in the market, which currently is being used in the market. And can they make a different product, can they make a product which has more innovation component in it? Can they even reduce the price of this product? You even that could be an innovation. And in a country like ours, think price innovation is a huge thing. 

You talked about service economy versus product economy. The service economy is not scalable. This is this everybody knows, you you cannot scale that to to a, you know, $10 billion, 100 billion, you can go to a point and then it has to stop because you have to keep getting people to do what you want them to do. On the other hand, product economy is always going to be scalable. And this is something that I figured out very early in my career. I saw companies like Metronik, like GE, like Philips, people who were doing innovation, vis-a-vis, putting these products in the market with every small innovation that they did, there was a new product in the market. And that new product was priced in a way that you had to be able to…even if you couldn’t afford it, you have to find some way of affording it. 

So I found that if I could break this channel, then there could be opportunities opening up for many, many people. And we did that with a couple of our products in the beginning. We had a urine analysis system, which was mobile phone based, which disrupted the market for the clini-tech machines, because there was a monopoly around those machines. We had a glucometer product at one fifth the price of Indian products, which again disrupted many of those players. They had to reduce their prices. We again had a haemoglobin monitoring product through Biosense, which was again priced in such a way or positioned in such a way that there could be very few players in that market. So we’ve tried to do that… and I keep saying to all my students, think of a product even before you start, you know, putting pen to paper. I do not want you working on abstract ideas. I do not want you working on paper output review articles. No, I want you to think of how do you get a patent at the end of your four years? And there have been PhD students in my lab who’ve gone on to file 30 patents or 40 patents in three years. If that’s the kind of output that one lab can get, I think it is infinite possibilities for India.

Q7 The 10X Impact Framework for Success

Swami (18:57.102)

So talk to me about the 10x impact and I’m sure, you know, people who are listening to this podcast can get inspired by that framework. So talk to me about the 10x impact framework.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (19:20.199)

Sure. And again, once again, thank you for bringing that up because I learned this from, of course, we were doing it for many years, but I learned this from an alumni of ours, Mr. Raj Nair, and who very generously donated, you know, time, money for building a facility which can take products from lab to market through a GMP sort of manufacturing. 

Now I’ll tell you what 10x impact means. We talked about how do we create 10 times the value of a product. How do we reduce prices by 10 times? How do we make the product reach 10 times where it is today? If those are the numbers, how do we create 10 times the number of startups I am thinking of? How do we find 10 times the patents that any lab does? How do we publish 10 times a regular lab? How do we sort of graduate 10 times the PhD students at any lab? Every parameter that you choose, I think 10 times. So today, if people have set up one, two startups, we’ve probably set up 20 startups. And we’ve got those numbers to prove. If people have done 20 patents, we’ve got 200 patents. 

Everywhere, I have told myself, I have to stretch myself so that this country can see the benefit that… this country offers the flexibility that this country offers, the flexibility that our institute offers, the manpower that our institute can get and the country can offer, can we use that for 10 times the impact? Now, can I reach 10 times the patients with each one of my product? That is my next goal. So if I can make all these products, tomorrow if I am able to reach a million patients versus 10 million patients, I would like to go that 10 million patient route because that’s where the impact will finally be.

Swami (21:17.454)

Brilliant, brilliant and I personally think from what you are saying, when I look at data, Professor…

last year, US filed about 320,000 patents. China filed about 1.4 million, okay? And India did about 90,000, okay? So which means that we can even create a 100x impact given the scale that we can start thinking. And that’s really what we’re talking about. What I read in an interesting way, which thanks to you, I got inspired. Qualcomm alone as a company in India filed 3,482 patents, which is higher than any Indian individual resident who filed a patent. So which means that if you don’t have that ambition, then we are not going to be able to compete and become a developed country in the next, you know, by 2047. So which means that the ambition to have the 10x impact is something that’s phenomenal. 

So thanks a lot for, you know, teaching me that and, you know, it helped me understand the perspective.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (22:38.655)

Thank you, thank you very much. I keep thanking the government because it’s because of the government’s vision is where we are. If they have started thinking that India needs to jump from the sixth, as you say, we are at the sixth in the patent filing to number one, if you have to get to where China is, each one of us have to think 10X and only then we will reach there.

Q8 Building NanoBIOS – an Innovation Ecosystem in Academia

Swami (23:00.61)

So talk to me about your Nano BIOS lab. What are the innovations? How many people work there? And how have you really built this ecosystem, if I were to call it? Because I see you as a co-founder in some companies, right? Not very often I find an academician actually being called a co-founder in a company. So clearly there is a very different mindset with which you are building those young minds. So talk to me about your lab and what are the things that you built in the lab that you are actually working on.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (24:07.637)

Thank you very much. I’ll start off with that co-founder statement and then go back. 

I am a co-founder in 15 startups now. So, you know, again, I’m doing it in that 10 X sort of numbers. I want to be a co-founder in 20 before I set Adani Industries. You know, that’s my goal. So I want to set up, you know, holding company which will have these 20 companies under them, each one of them, revenue generation, each one of them, you know, making an impact for this country. That’s my final goal. I don’t know whether I’ll reach there or not, but that’s something I keep in mind. 

Now let me go back to the beginning of this journey when I started out at IIT Bombay and I was offered positions at different IITs. Of course, I chose IIT Bombay because I believe that we had an ecosystem which was in close proximity to industries. Bombay being the financial capital, I knew that there would always be companies which would come and partner with us, which would actually come and give us problem statements that we could then solve. I had not thought that far ahead, but this was my thinking at that time. When I did join this department, I was the 12th faculty to do so. So far, was not anybody who had ventured into a sort of translation. There were people who were doing that. I won’t name them, but so far, there was not a successful product. 

I believe that a lab needs to be different and it needs to work on not just training people because that’s what we have been given as a mandate in IIT Bombay, not just for educating people because that’s again a second mandate, but also in terms of creating an impact. Now with these three things in mind, education, training, and impact, I believe that I could do something different for this country. And that’s what I am trying to tell to every faculty who joins IITs, IISCs, ICERs, any IISC…any of these colleges, NITs, think different, think how you can use the current ecosystem and create an ecosystem for this country which continues giving back to this country. We don’t want people to go out of the country and this is something that I inculcate in my students from day one. 

Most of my students, you will believe me, of my 50 plus students are in the country, they are faculty of some or the other institute or they are working for India or they are working for a… some industry, but for India. 

And that’s something I inculcated right in the beginning. I said, I want you to, even if you do go, you have to come back and you have to give back to this country. With that one thing in mind, we moved ahead and Nanobias Lab was set up. In five years, I had decided that I did not want to go a standard professor route. And you know what the professor route is. They become an assistant professor four years down the line, they’re an associate. Four years down the line, they’re a full professor. I said, I’ll do different.

So every year that, you know, went by from our lab, we had multiple PhD students joining our lab. And I kept increasing that number. IITs allow at most eight students to join a lab. This is a standard number. We had 24 at a time. And I continuously believed in flouting rules, not for the, you know, for doing anything bad, but for doing good for the country. Because I believe that the more people I train, the more benefit it will have in the future. And I think I have been proved right in that, but time will tell. Now with that first five years, we set up a lab where our focus was products. And we said that we wanted to build products, start small, maybe show one success story. And then I’m sure that over the years, this one success story will lead to several successes. And that’s what I keep telling everybody. Go after that one product that you think can be made with your expertise and my expertise was engineering, my expertise was biomedical sort of interface. So I chose a product which I felt could be in that interface. So I could make assays, which is developmental work and I could actually make an electronics around it. So we made a product, we put it in market. Over the last 10 years or so, we’ve put several products in the market now based on that one. But we got every award in this country. Now this is what I’m really grateful for is that Nanobios Lab today stands tall amongst every lab in the country. Why? Because of the training that we gave these people. We actually made them think differently. That when you come in a lab like ours, day one, you’re thinking of setting up a startup at the end of your career. If you’re not setting up a startup, you’re probably transferring the technology to somebody to set up a startup. And that’s my goal. And that’s the goal that I keep working even today, I’m meeting students every day and I’m encouraging them to set up a startup. Why? Because it doesn’t help me in the long run more than what it has done, but it helps us that we have now more and more student turned entrepreneurs. We have more and more people thinking translation. We have more and more students of ours, ex-students of our training, more and more students. So that’s a cycle that will never stop. And if I can… If I have played a small role in that, I believe that over the next 15 or 20 years, you will see many, many more faculty doing the same thing and being able to help our country much, much more than what I have been able to do. So that’s the story.

Q9 Transforming Students into Innovators 

Swami (29:38.862)

If you look at our own education system, Professor, it doesn’t allow us this whole bit about the curiosity that’s required, right? Because we have pretty much a culture where we are assessment oriented, right? You write an exam, you pass an exam, you get your academic scores, that’s really how it moves, right? So when you get these students, how do you transition them into this thinking? Because it’s a thinking that requires a very different research mindset versus a job mindset, right? So how do you really transition them into this thinking?

Prof Rohit Srivastava (30:35.861)

Once again, I will make this clear that not 100% of my students will go on to become entrepreneurs. Even if you can encourage 20% of these to turn entrepreneurs to start thinking translation, to start thinking of a product, I am very successful. And that’s the reason why I do 10 times the number, because if I can train 200 or 250, 300 interns over the last 10 years, even if 10% of these interns go on to… join a lab where they think translation, they work on a product, I’m very happy because I have at least made that impact. One thing I do tell these people when they come into my lab is that I do not want you to work on a problem statement that will remain in the lab. If you have an opportunity to take it outside the lab, I will help you do that. If you do not get the opportunity of taking it outside the lab, I’ll find somebody to take it out of the lab. And this is something that I have always told them that at the end of four years, five years, six years, whatever it takes for them to finish up their PhD. I usually try that they finish up at four, but many students take longer. I would say I want something on my table. And when I say I want something on my table, let me give you an example. So I’ll, you know, I always have some example to show. 

So there’s a student that worked on, you know, look at these sponges and you will see that there are these small sponges in them. And I keep them in my table because somebody, a clinician comes, I am very happy to show this to him. This is a problem statement given by a clinician who knows that there is a market for it. Now, how do we even encourage people to start thinking? Because we want them to start talking to these clinicians early in their career. And the day they join, within a few months, we’ll have an interaction with a clinician in the area that they want to work on. Give them a problem statement, give them what…you know, exists out there in the market. Maybe they find it themselves, but then at the end of it, they come to me with a product that is sitting on my table. Now, this is not a full product. This is probably a prototype. This is a not even an MVP, a minimal viable, but it is something that is there on my table reminding me that I have to take this forward into the market. And that’s what I want them to figure out. I want them to have all these on my table so that at the end of the month, I see what I have been able to move forward into the market. And that’s the goal that I work with. That’s the goal that these students work with. That we want everybody to have at least one product at the end of their PhD, their master’s, their bachelor’s, whatever it is. Whatever you do, if you’re helping a student, then you be part of that ecosystem. That’s all I want.

Q10 Why Interdisciplinary Thinking Creates Better Products

Swami (33:20.046)

Which brings me to another question. When you really start thinking like this, in one of the interviews and some paper that I read of yours, you talked about interdisciplinary thinking. Because typically when you think of biomedical or when you think of pharma or when you think of biotechnology, you tend to get specialized in an area. But when you start thinking about a product, you need to think design, need to think UI, you need to think electronics. So therefore, what’s the importance of the interdisciplinary knowledge when you want to do something like this?

Prof Rohit Srivastava (34:00.821)

Once again, whenever I give a presentation, the first slide I show is the ecosystem of IIT Bombay. And that ecosystem shows the science departments, the engineering departments, and the interdisciplinary labs. And I keep focusing on that one slide to everybody sitting in the audience saying that you as an individual sitting in one of these labs cannot make an impact when you as a team working with all these different departments, different expertise, different labs can make an impact. So we work very closely with science departments because that’s where the deep science lies. And I always keep saying this, that without deep science, there is no technology. 

You have to first work on science, science behind, say, know, making a drug delivery device, science behind making a smart, theranostic device, science behind using micro needles for drug delivery, science behind using a novel material for cancer therapy and so on and so forth. So there are hundreds and thousands of these deep science which is sitting in every lab. Can we now start interacting with these people in different departments, bring them together on one platform where they are also talking face to face with people who’ve taken that product to market or a similar product to market. And that’s how you build teams is super in this sense, in the sense that there are people who are expert in their domains, who are willing to collaborate with others, you have to have the mindset of bringing them together. And that’s what interdisciplinary research is.

Bioengineering is the most interdisciplinary of all of them because we get students from clinical background, we get students from dental background, we get students from pharma, we get students from biotech, we get students from core engineering… which is electrical, mechanical, chemical. We also get students from biomedical engineering, plus we get students from veterinary science. So you can imagine the breadth that biomedical engineering works with. Now with this sort of background, how do you even bring them on a same platform? Possibly very difficult, which means that you now bring them in contact with people in different departments having different skill sets. And if you can do that and bring all these people together, then believe me that a product is just an arm’s length away and that’s what we have seen… 

Every student has a different background. You cannot bring them on the same platform because, you know, people with a clinical background, very difficult for them to start thinking engineering on day one. People with a pharma background, very difficult for them to start clinical on day one. How do you get them together? You have to actually bring them on one platform, which is you bring them in contact with different expertise deciding in different departments. That’s interdisciplinary. Bring them together, so that they start working on projects together. And this is why when we do projects, we have a lot of these projects that we do together with other faculty in IIT Bombay, where we share IPs, where we share expertise, but in the end, there’s a common goal of creating a product.

Q11 Cross-Pollinating Innovation with Bioclusters Across Universities

Swami (37:49.806)

One of the challenges in this whole, you know, IP and patent-oriented thinking is really the fact that as an academician, it is not just IIT, but if I really look at National Institutes of Importance, if I really were to call it and India churns out close to about 24,000 PhDs, right, while US probably when I looked at the number, it’s about 64,000. Okay. So you almost have the three times the number of PhDs that probably, you know, US churns out. Right. So if you want to cross-pollinate this culture in at least the, you know, the top, you know, 171 institutes that are of national importance, how do you cross-pollinate this culture across these institutes.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (38:49.173)

Again, a very interesting question. And I think the answer lies to creating more clusters. And we have some clusters. We’ve got a Bangalore bio cluster. We’ve got a Pune bio cluster. We are making a Mumbai sort of bio cluster. And I talk about clusters. And there is one in Faridabad as well. So there are clusters which have been made bringing together institutes having different expertise. So there’s a technology institute. There’s a medical institute. There is a science institute and there is probably a pharma institute or a basic science or a translational or a smaller engineering college. But all these are part of that one cluster. The moment you have, you make more of these clusters. Imagine you have one in the Eastern India, there is a Bhuvneshwar bio cluster. There is of course a Hyderabad bio cluster. So there are many of these already existing in India. Maybe we’ll have to replicate that model. Maybe we’ll have to bring more institutes together… but not more than 10 is what I say. I’ve always seen that it’s very difficult to work with more than five institutes at the same time. If I can limit it, I would limit it to five. But the moment you limit it to five, you will probably have to build like 50, or 20, or 30, or 40 such clusters in the country. 

Maybe have one cluster in every state. If we can do that, one bio cluster which looks after five, six, seven top institutes in that state, you bring the expertise of these clusters together, you bring them together, you bring the best practices together and that is something going to be very useful and you bring the best people together. Once you do that, believe me when I say this, getting from 24,000 PhDs to 80,000 and the Prime Minister has just mentioned that over the next five years, we’ll be funding 100,000 sort of PhDs and I think that’s going to happen in this country. We will see that increase in number because more and more people are now moving towards working together in teams. And as you said, interdisciplinary is the way forward. Clusters are one of the ways we can do it. If we can actually replicate this model across every state in this country, I think India will be number one in no time.

Q12 How Patents Create a Virtuous Cycle of Innovation

Swami (41:04.462)

I was just looking at some of the numbers you know of the university or you know institutions filing patents and the revenue generated by these patents right and so I was looking at something like about 368 patents actually giving out close to about say over a 141 billion dollars is the kind of number that we are talking. So for people to understand the scale that you are talking, say for example, for me, when I saw this number, it shook me a bit because I’m just going to read that out so that people understand this. For example, what I saw was Northwestern University out of the patents that they filed, they made about 191 million in revenue. Columbia made 146 million. You had Princeton making 115 million. So what this accelerates is there is a licensing revenue that the university gets and therefore you are able to fund more innovation. Therefore you are able to actually build more startups, more products and therefore it is a virtuous cycle that you are trying to build and that is what these clusters that you talking about need to do is really what I thinking. I just wanted to understand your perspective on this.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (42:46.677)

You’re right. In fact, you brought this point out very clearly and it will take us years. It will take us at least 10 years before we start seeing the fruits that we are, or the seeds that we are sowing right now. But if we continue doing it this way, every IIT, every institute in the country is going to follow the models that IITs are setting up and IIT Bombay is at the foremost in the sense that we have a beautiful model of technology transferred to a startup where the startup gets the technology at zero or nominal price, but then its responsibility is to give back to the ecosystem. And as it generates, keeps generating more and more revenues, a part of that revenue comes back to the Institute. And that’s how these institutes are earning in the, in the US. Our goal is similar. If we can set up multiple such startups, multiple unicorns, which are creating value for the economy, then they will also keep giving back to the Institute. And if you can do that in clusters, and you can do that over the next 10 years with 40 such clusters, believe me, we will of course be at the same level that these economies are because our economy is bigger than these economies. And if we can actually do it at scale, we are going to beat them hands down.

Q13 Advice for Young Academics: Be Innovation Builders

Swami (44:12.056)

What would be your advice to young academicians who are getting into universities, colleges, because there are also data which tells me that many of these positions never get filled, right? Therefore, it’s important for somebody like you to talk about the fact that you can be a co-founder in a startup, you can still teach, you can be at the cutting edge and you are just not getting up in the morning and teaching, right? So therefore, you know, so that you can actually have an industry-academia partnership. Talk to me about the opportunity that a position like yours can help young academicians and how can they build that ambition.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (45:04.469)

So before I even do that…

…let me first of all bring this point across that not every institute is like an IIT. And this is IIT or an IISc for that. Let me just make that clear. Even today, AIIMS doctors are not allowed to set up startups, which is 75 years into independence. And these people, all they do is practice, practice and practice. When in fact, the top medical colleges in the US, everybody is doing something different. They’re part of startups, they’re already into doing many things other than just their practice. I do believe that we have that advantage over others, that we have the best doctors in the world, we have the best technologists in the world. How do we bring them together? 

If we just make some policy changes at each one of these universities, and I think the first step the government is doing is bringing a program like PAIR, which is pairing up a institute of eminence or a large institute like ours with universities which can be modeled on that institute and which can be helped by that institute. And as you said, if more of us can partner with universities, more of us can go and talk to these people in the university system that look, this is the possibility that you can end up setting up a startup, you can end up being you know, getting a product to market and that’s just one product that we’re talking about and you can get to, you know, getting revenue generation for your university and the university allows you to do that. Then I think over the next 10 years or so, we will see not one person like me, but at least you will see, you know, at least thousand faculty like me. And that’s the goal that I am working towards. You know, if I cannot be an institution builder, you know, and this is something that I keep talking to everybody. There are two, a class of people in this institute, this country who are institution builders and they are like forward thinkers. They have thoughts so big for India that today we have all these large institutes which have been set up by all these visionary thinkers. 

Let me be a person who can be an innovator builder. I cannot be an institution builder, I can be an innovator builder. 

If I can build…thousand innovators for this country over the next 10 years. I think I’ve done my job and these thousand would go on to build another maybe hundred each or 10 each, you know, it will multiply. And that’s the thing that I would like to do. So far, maybe I’ve done 200, you I don’t know. I don’t even know the numbers, but I’m working towards that one goal of building an innovation and technology in this country. And this is the reason why you see that award behind me, which is the first time that government has recognized innovation and technology. 

And this is something that is going to be extremely useful for innovators to start thinking about or youngsters to start thinking about that look, even if you’re not doing basic research, you are not doing, you know, engineering, regular engineering work, we can still get recognition for innovation. And that’s what I want this country to be – number one in innovation index.

Q14 Can India Create Its Own Philips or Siemens?

Swami (48:22.006)

. So it’s almost like saying, can we create in the next 50 years a Philips out of India, a Siemens out of India? And that is really the vision with which, you know, some of these innovation builders like you are thinking and you need a community of students and university ecosystems and the government as a catalyst and the industry as funders to create these large billion dollar institutions and that’s really where I think your vision and dream is, right?

Prof Rohit Srivastava (48:58.591)

Yes, yes, absolutely. 

Q15 What is Success?

Swami

Fantastic. So thanks a lot for your conversation. I’m going to end with a rapid fire question, which is really about four short questions before we finish. What does success mean to you?

Prof Rohit Srivastava

So success to me means in very short term getting India due recognition. That’s the only thing that I work for.

Q16 Advice for 18-Year-Olds in University Today

Swami (49:25.774)

What would be your advice to an 18 year old in a university today?

Prof Rohit Srivastava (49:33.695)

Don’t worry about pursuing in our traditional engineering or traditional medicine or a traditional degree course. Worry about creating a product for India. That’s the only thing that I want.

Q17 The Best Advice I’ve Ever Received

Swami (49:49.23)

What is one piece of advice you would have received a lot that you remember and continue to actually remember even today?

Prof Rohit Srivastava (50:00.053)

So I, you know, I always got this advice from people, you know, as I mentioned right in the beginning from my mentors, continue helping people. Even if they don’t give back to you, to the Institute, to the country, I will continue helping them. And I will continue doing this for the rest of my life because one day I believe that with all these efforts, we will be number one in the world.

Q18 My Dream Dinner with Innovation Giants

Swami (50:24.423)

If you were to have a dream dinner with people who are living, not living, who you would want to learn from, who would those three or four people be on the dinner table and why would you want them and what would you want to learn from?

Prof Rohit Srivastava (50:39.615)

So number one is of course, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, know, and this is, I really wish I had, you know, received an award from him while he was alive, but that’s, you know, that’s my fate. Maybe I could have, you know, one day with him. Elon Musk is number two, because, you know, these are people who are, who are visionary thinkers, you know, Professor Robert Langer is the third. And of course, you know, coming back to India. There are people, of course there are many, many, many people, but I would like to have met Mr. Ratan Tata. I did not get that opportunity.

Q19 The 10X Thinking That People Find Hard to Accept

Swami (51:17.848)

And my last question to you is, what is one thing that you believe that, you know, people really, what you believe in, but they really find it hard to agree with you.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (51:41.295)

The 10x thinking and that’s something that I am still trying to push across that you let people do as much as possible. Don’t bind them to one goal that you think is right. Let them be independent. That’s what all my students are. Let them be independent and see how far their wings can unfold.

CLOSING

Swami (52:01.112)

Thanks. This is a brilliant conversation. think what you set out to do for me is something that I can never forget in my life. The way you set up the context for this conversation. Therefore, I did a lot more work, started to learn a lot more for this conversation. So thanks a lot for your time. And I’m really privileged to have had this great conversation with you.

Prof Rohit Srivastava (52:25.193)

Thank you very much. Thank you so much to everybody. Thank you.

END.