The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is in the process of setting up an innovation fund, worth ₹400-500 crore, to invest in early stage startups and prod innovation, a senior official told The Hindu . “The proposal has been cleared in-principle by the Prime Minister,” Girish Sahni, Director-General, CSIR, told The Hindu. “We will be using a portion of our own funds for this,” he added.
The 75-year-old organisation — India’s largest patentee and publisher of research papers — is also grappling with a crisis of trying to generate more revenues from its portfolio of inventions as well encourage its staff scientists to become entrepreneurs and start companies of their own.
Generating funds
Mr. Sahni added that the availability of money for CSIR scientists to spin off companies was rarely a problem but issues on how CSIR ought to be fairly compensated and the optimal use of its resources, such as students, lab facilities, were still a work in progress.
In the way the scheme is now envisaged, CSIR will have professionals from outside to manage the funds.
Plans of an innovation fund come even as CSIR has been asked, last year, to aim to self-generate half of its budget. To that end, the organisation has also identified a suite of technologies that can be brought to market relatively quickly.
