Venture Center, a leading technology business incubator for science-driven enterprises in India, has announced a partnership with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) to support capacity-building efforts aimed at strengthening technology transfer offices in Indian institutions, to increase commercialisation of innovations.

It is envisaged that this will improve industry-academia collaborations in research, development, and deployment, leading to co-design and co-development of innovative products and solutions.

Venture Centre’s engagement comes in the backdrop of UNIDO and BEE’s ongoing project in India, ‘Facility for Low Carbon Technology Deployment (FLCTD)’. This project has supported early-stage and late-stage climate-tech startups to provide innovative solutions for industrial and commercial sectors. The unique approach evolved in the FLCTD project to ‘de-risk’ innovations has helped over 30 climate tech startups in commercialising their products and solutions.

In addition, the FLCTD project is exploring ways to strengthen the technology transfer function in higher education institutes and research and development laboratories so that Indian industries benefit from the research in the domain of science and technology. 

To share the learnings of technology ‘de-risking’ and ‘commercialisation of innovations’ with technology transfer centres, UNIDO and BEE have engaged Venture Center to develop and implement a handbook and a series of a training programme on Technology Transfer function aimed at the practitioners, startup, faculty and research and development personnel and government officials.

Venture Center shall implement this effort over the next ten months with the help of international and national experts and experienced technology transfer professionals. The senior mentors shall include Dr Ashley Stevens (ex-Boston University), Dr John Fraser (ex-Florida State University and Simon Fraser University) and Dr Richard Cahoon  (ex-Cornell University) – all Past Presidents and Senior Members of the American Association of University Technology Managers.