CSIR Pvt. Tech Ltd. (CSIR-Tech), a company affiliated to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and primarily formed to commercialise technology developed by the 75-year-old organisation’s 37 labs, has been shut down.
“..Folks, CSIR-Tech is shutting down its operation after 6 years… sad for commercialization of Scientific R&D in India. Many lessons learned for similar future endeavours,” said a February 9 post on the CSIR-Tech Facebook page. Its website is defunct.
Exactly a year to that date, on 2016, Union Science Minister Harsh Vardhan visited the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune (where CSIR-Tech was based) and said, according to a press release from the Science Ministry, that he “was pleased with the approach that CSIR-Tech had taken to not only do technology transfer to small and medium enterprises in India, but also to invest in science-based start-ups and laboratory spin-offs.”
CEO of CSIR-Tech Amitabh Shrivastava, an entrepreneur, told The Hindu that a lack of legal support or funds and delays in executing commercial deals by CSIR labs were among the key impediments to the success of CSIR-Tech. “There was no official office memorandum that empowered CSIR-Tech to have exclusive rights to commercialise CSIR’s patent portfolio,” he said, adding all employees had left as of November last and he was the “last employee” staying back only to shut it down.
Mr. Shrivastava added, “We did some deals with CSIR labs but it was all dependent on the enthusiasm of individual directors of labs. I arranged about ₹30 crore from investors, used that to pay salaries but ultimately couldn’t scale up because there was no money or funding from CSIR.”
CSIR-Tech’s senior leadership consisted of directors of CSIR-labs including Dr. S. Sivaram, Ex-Director, National Chemical Laboratory (A CSIR-lab), veteran economist Vijay Kelkar, Former Finance Secretary and CSIR-Tech Chairman, and entrepreneurs Saurabh Srivastava, former chairman of NASSCOM; Luis Miranda, Founder, IDFC Private Equity and Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global Foundation.
Though a repository of myriad technology and innovative scientists, CSIR — the country’s largest patent holder — spends more on keeping its patents active than earning royalty out of them. It has a relatively high rate of commercialising its patents (about 9% compared to a global average of 4%) but these earn too little. Most of CSIR’s revenues are derived from consultancy, and projects for India’s defence and space activities. CSIR-Tech was conceived to address this problem.
On the anvil since 2008, CSIR-Tech was to be an autonomous company that would hold all of the CSIR’s patent portfolio (2,747 in-force as of 2012) and earn CSIR revenues, either by holding equity in promising startups or earn royalties and licensing fees.
Imperial Innovations, a company linked to Imperial College London was a model, said Mr. Shrivastava. By the time it formally came into existence, in 2011, CSIR-Tech was far from being anything like Imperial Innovations and — except for the CSIR name — didn’t have practical support from the organisation. CSIR Director-General Girish Sahni didn’t respond to requests for comment. Samir Brahmachari, former CSIR-DG and in whose time the company came into being said it an idea “ahead of its time.”
