Book Summery

Patent IPR Licensing-

Technology Commercialisation-

Innovation Marketing

This is a guide book for researchers and innovators from IFIA member, Indian Innovators Association. The Author in his long association with innovators noticed that more often benefits from creative endeavor elude the researcher/ engineer. The point of vexation arises when they notice that there are no buyers for their innovation.

One remedy for this heart burning experience is to start preparation for commercialization early in the development phase with clarity on the fundamentals of relevant market. The market is different for Patent license, Technology Commercialization and Innovation. Understanding characteristics of the market you are jumping into is a pre-requisite for non-business savvy innovator. This guide book takes the reader to each of these markets giving a basic view of each market.

Message from Alireza RASTEGAR, IFIA President:

Intellectual Property protection, licensing, commercialization and innovation marketing are the required steps for developing an innovative idea into a marketable product. Having knowledge about these concepts ensured the successful exploitation of the innovative technologies in the industrial sectors.

The community of idea owners needs to know how to prepare a well-drafted patent application, generate wealth from the patent, create physical products to help the brand

thrive and license their patents without the need to write a business plan, develop a marketing strategy, spend money on advertising, or find distribution.

Thanks to the efforts made by the Indian Innovator Association, IFIA Full member and representative in India, such information has become available. The inventors and innovators all around the world are encouraged to benefit from the wealth of knowledge

included in the book "PATENT LICENSING TECHNOLOGY COMMERCIALISATION INNOVATION MARKETING" and become familiar with a variety of new concepts.

The book is available at , Flipkart, Amazon, Kindle, iBook, Google Play etc.

Market leaders to Category Kings: Fast mover takes all.

Report by Play Bigger `Time To Market Cap: The new metric that matter' elaborated on this concept of Category Kings.
TTMC is the measure of the time it takes a company to reach certain market capitalization milestones such as $500 million, $1 billion, or $5 billion. Time is measured by the number of years since the company was founded. Market cap is measured by (a) a company public market
capitalization, or (b) a company valuation at the time of purchase, or (c) the most recent post-money valuation from a round of financing.
Category Kings, the companies that dominate the rest of their competitors in a particular market, rise above the rest. Think Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb, Workday. Category Kings take a greater percentage of a category’s total market cap now than in any previous era. Most Category Kings win 76 percent of the category’s valuation.
Consumers Vs Enterprise
Is there a difference in TTMC by category of company?
Consumer companies had a much faster TTMC than enterprise
companies by a wide margin. However, enterprise companies went thru the same phenomenon, though stretched over longer time periods. So within the enterprise group, while not as fast as for consumer, were enterprise companies where TTMC was still accelerating, with enterprise companies reaching $500 million almost twice as fast for Era 3 (2009-13) compared with Era 1 (2000-3).

Q&A By Abhishar team of IIITM, Gwalior

Abhishar is a student publication of IIITM, Gwalior. Vol 2 of November 2012 includes Q&A with me. See them below:

1. What do you presume to be like an X-factor in innovators for the  screening process?

Prior work and due diligence.student innovators could start business with  entry barriers for competitors provided the business is related to their  project/ institute IP.

 2. Whilst observing dozens of technopreneurs for so many years now, which  property would you consider was rarest amongst them?

Speed of conversion from proof of concept to commercial product. Being first timers, the technopreneurs do not have access to commercial enterprises production know-how.And commercially successful products need to be made of currently available commercial components/ sub-assemblies.

3. What was the prime advantage you considered the IP mapping project  would bring to the Indian education sector?

Awareness- the students need to know what someone in their institute knows and what students of other institutes knew. Prior-art is global and students should routinize tracking. 

4. In the thick of a number of successful entrepreneurs, whose name would  you consider worth mentioning as a source of inspiration for our readers?

Inspiration comes from innovators students can relate to in their field to emulate.If their dream is electronic gadgets , then Steve of Apple inspires millions. 

5. During your tenure at IIMA, which part of the curriculum did you reason was the most vital?

Integrating incubator with regular academic programs is an initiative with long term impact to transform great educational institute into a great entrepreneurial university.

6. In your view, what is “Innovation”?

The product sold in large numbers is innovation.Innovation adds to the stock of public knowledge when large number of users benefit from it.

7. What are the critical success factors for a start up in an IT domain?
Time to market- concept to beta version should be completed in less than 6 months and with boot strapping. 

8. In your view what are the three technical innovations that affected lives of millions all over the globe?

Internet, semi conductors and vaccines.

9.. Which is your favorite movie?

Like the (rare )Indian science fiction movies.The current favourite is `Eega in telugu/Makki in Hindi'

I am puzzled that most students do not connect with their academic projects/ learning in B plans of their dream start-up. Teaching may be generic but learning is specific. Can it not be leveraged  when starting enterprise?

Erli Bird for Startups

One of the biggest challenges for every startup is finding initial customers. Many companies invest thousands of dollars creating a new product only to fail out of the gate, without ever achieving a userbase large enough to truly test an idea. Others waste months developing complex new technology, and upon launching, quickly find out that they’ve made very big mistakes or solved the wrong problem altogether.

Erli Bird was created to help solve these problems by allowing startups to find the right early adopters, incentivize product evangelists, and quickly learn from their customers, iterate, and build more compelling products.
How it Works:
• Your startup is featured for 1 – 3 weeks. Your company will appear on our homepage and have a dedicated “feature” page.
• While your startup is featured, you can list a limited number of slots available for early adopters to take part in your startup (25 – 500 users). During this time, Erli Bird users have the opportunity to “Claim a Spot”.
• You can optionally provide an incentive to users for extra motivation to sign up. Examples include freebies (e.g. $10 gift card), promotional items (e.g. free t-shirt or magnets), discounts, or anything creative (e.g. beer with the founder, free pizza party have been done on Erli Bird).
• Our service includes an optional gamification system to encourage high-quality user behavior.
• You will have access to the list of users that have claimed a spot for your startup and can
communicate with them directly.

Rethinking the Elevator Pitch:Jeff Bonforte

Read this post in Jeff blog and found it interesting. Read at:
http://blog.bonforte.com/2009/04/24/what-are-you-trying-saying-rethinking-the-elevator-pitch/

Duct Inspection Robot

Business Line covered ITsAP expo, Hyderabad where several start-ups participated. One of the participant start-up Robosoft systems was covered by Shivani Shinde in Business Standard. The story needs to be retold - a young passionate student wins prize in Robotic competition in 2004 at IITB, approached by Duct Cleaning firm EPSCO to develop low cost robots for duct cleaning and intial success leads to more orders from others like Bluestar.

Aikon Labs

Planet Aikon is an `Enterprise Idea Management & Execution Platform' promoted by RR Dasgupta andDilip Thomas Ittyera. Aikon Labs LLC ,the start-up venture behind PlanetAikon™ is incorporated in the State of Delaware in US and the core team is based out of Pune. We need to encouarge Idea Management tools and Platforms and this is an welcome addition.

Start-up funds from Morpheus

Morpheus is now accepting applications for its fourth batch of startups. Last date for submission is 10 Mar 2010. There will be mentoring and seed funding of Rs 5 lakhs. See their existing portfolio of start-ups at:
http://themorpheus.com/portfolio/

Invention Capitalism

See presentation by Peter N Detkin. Intellectual Ventures started investing in India- is it in patentable academic research or in technology ventures?

CircuitSutra

CircuitSutra a start-up incubated at Amity Innovation Incubator, focuses on IC/SoC Design Companies, Embedded Product Companies, and EDA tool companies with core competence System C modelling. Founder Umesh Sisodia worked in SCL, Cadence etc.

Bi Box from start up evobi

Bi-Box is a small box with an Electronic Brain which can be connected to various electronic devices or toys and instructed to behave the way you want it to. It is supported under TePP. This start-up figures among the ten promising Indian companies by Global Thought.

Pruthvi- Universal TV demodulator IC based on Software Defined Radio (SDR) architecture

Saankhya Labs, a fabless chip startup based in Bangalore, has announced its Universal TV demodulator IC based on Software Defined Radio (SDR) architecture, and targeted at World TV and PC-TV receiver markets. Built on an ASSP (application specific signal processor) platform, the product named Pruthvi - is made up of programmable DSPs, and is the first demodulation IC to enable Global TV Chassis, the company claimed. The product prototype that supports all standards on a FPGA platform is ready and has been demonstrated to 6 major TV companies in Japan. Read more : EETimes.com
The founders, Viswa Kayagadde and Parag Naik worked at Philips Research lab and promoted Vayavya labs in 2006.

Ambicales

Ambicales is a start-up promted by Sudhir Manchanda and Mayank Agarwal, of IIT Roorkee. Service offerings:

Biomass energy: To replace oil consumption in thermal applications and power generation in industries. Wind energy: Help in making an informed decision to choose the best project from among the various options from different companies. Solar energy: Power plants (both PV and Steam route) and Industrial applications. Energy Efficiency: Expertise in thermal processes and waste heat recovery solutions. Carbon Strategy: Carbon Footprinting, Mitigation measures and leveraging the Green Brand.

Dubzer

Dubzer works in sync with customers existing website and allows them to choose the content that should be modified, define the translation process at a webpage level, and publish all updates on demand. The founding team ( Anjali Gupta, Santosh Dawara )has in its past introduced innovative award-winning products in the Web and Natural Languages domain. These include products such as Lipikaar (www.lipikaar.com) a patented content creation product that has been used by over 25,000 content writers in 18 languages. Lipikaar won the Manthan Award South Asia 2008 for it’s simplicity and mass-appeal, and was featured by the Times of India, DNA, and CNBC TV18.

Capillary Technologies

Capillary Technologies , Bangalore based start-up ,is an end to end CRM solution provider currently serving 400 stores in more than 75 cities across the length and breadth of country.Products include card less loyalty program in touch.

Corporate Gurukul

Corporate Gurukul aimed at training graduates and under graduates on industry readiness was promoted by alumnus of SPJIMR, Rajesh Panda and Radhika Datar. In short period of 18 months, they trained over 5000 graduates & under graduates and assessed over 50,000 participants on industry readiness / employability.

Technium Challenge International

Technium Challenge International is organised by the Welsh Assembly Government’s International Business Wales (IBW) team in selected countries overseas. The annual international business planning competition provides opportunities for companies looking to establish a foothold within the Europe and UK marketplace.Two Indian technology companies, Lifecare Innovations and Oriental Aquamarine Biotech, are among the five companies selected for the final round of Technium Challenge International.
Both these technology ventures received support from Ministry of Science & Technology. Scientists Dr Jitendra Verma and IS Bright Singh, showed that India may be difficult country to start a technology venture but rewards are certain after initial struggle.
Source: webnewswire

Renewable Energy Search

Renewable Energy Search is an endeavor by CIIE (IIM Ahmedabad) and MNRE (Government of India) to identify, encourage and incubate entrepreneurial ideas aimed at solving the energy crisis through use of existing clean energy related research. Support is available for Start-ups, Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR) and for Innovators. For details: http://www.re-search.in/

iAccelerator

Applications accepted for 2009 edition of iAccelerator at IIM ,Ahmedabad. Last date is April 1st. It is an intensive start-up assistance program with campus training of 4 month from May 1st to Sept 1st.

2008 Year of Unknown Innovators Part 3

This is story of Kiran Kranti Vistakula.

From my childhood I was interested in science and technology. In my schooling days I was active doing experiments at my house. I even caused fire while creating an electromagnet and blew up a box creating oxy acetylene flame. This interest in science has always leaded me to explore new ideas.

I have explored many ideas and took them to success all through my life. One such example is in my masters at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I had come up with an idea of generating electrical energy using proteins as transducers. NASA funded this idea with me as a principle investigator (PI) and this PI status is rarely given to students. The project was successfully completed. Additionally, this experience moved my interest to running my own projects and this lead to my interest in entrepreneurship.

One day at MIT, I had a class in half hour and it was snowing out. I put on three layers of clothing to attend the class. I had to walk inside and outside buildings to reach my class. This was a very uncomfortable walk and I was late to the class. While I was inside in building, the temperature was maintained and it got hot inside with three layers and had to remove them. While outside I had put on the layers and I was delayed for the class. Being frustrated I decided to get some thermal regulating apparel but I could not find any in the market. Then I decided to solve this problem and devise a garment for my self. From the next day I started working on it and hoped to finish in a week being over confident. But this turned out to be a very complex thermodynamic problem. So my first prototype (PT1) was very heavy and was not very aesthetic.

Over a period of next one year still at school I worked on developing and perfecting the technology. In Aug 2007 the technology needed more development and additional funding, I approached Dr AS Rao of TePP with my proposal and returned back to India. TePP funded the project and I was offered incubation at IIT Delhi and NID Ahmedabad. Dr AS Rao and his team were very supporting from the beginning and their moral support was incredible. After careful consideration I chose NID, which provided me more freedom and facilities. The project was proposed to couple of students at NID. Prasenjit, a Post Graduated student in Apparel designs and merchandising was interested in the project. Mahesh Krovidi, COO of National Design Business Incubator at NID was extremely helpful in starting up my operations at NID and hiring Prasenjit to start working with me.

We initiated prototype development in January 2008. I took the technology to Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Program. I won a gold medal in the competition they organized. During that process the IC2 institute of UT Austin along with FICCI helped in acquiring business contacts. FICCI was instrumental in providing entrepreneurial training. I also won the first place in India innovation pioneers challenge, champions of champion category organized by Intel, Indo US STF, and DST. My technology represented India at Intel Berkeley Business Entrepreneur Competition (IBTEC). The technology was the finalist there. Dr Smirit Trikha, Arbinada Mitra, Manav Subodh and Neel Bhatia of Indousstf and Intel were extremely helpful. They provided contacts and guidance to participate in IBTEC. In the past one-year we have developed seven jacket prototypes, ten neck cooler prototype and three helmet prototypes.

Overall the Indian ecosystem is ripe for entrepreneurship. Until now my experience as a entrepreneur is extraordinary and every success has been supported by the mentors like Dr AS Rao, Mr HK Mittal and others. I feel this is the golden era for entrepreneurship in India.