The Union Minister of science and technology, Dr Harsh Vardhan recently met with leaders and team members of CSIR-Tech Pvt Ltd at CSIR-NCL’s campus, Pune. CSIR-Tech’s leadership present at the said meeting included its Chairman, Padma Vibhushan Dr Vijay Kelkar and the Executive Director and CEO, Mr Amitabh Shrivastava.
In a highly interactive session, the Minister keenly asked questions about the successful work of technology commercialization that CSIR-Tech was involved with for the last 3 years. Dr Vijay Kelkar talked about the yeoman service that CSIR-Tech was doing which directly aligns with the government of India’s programs like ‘Start-up India’ and ‘Make in India’.
Mr Amitabh Shrivastava, as the CEO of CSIR-Tech talked about how technology and intellectual property being developed at government funded institutions like CSIR, BARC, IITs, DST labs, DRDO, etc. is finding its way to touch common lives through CSIR-Tech Pvt Ltd.
Dr Harsh Vardhan 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. CSIR-Tech invests in science based start ups and spin off businesses through its ‘India Science Venture Fund’, a SEBI registered fund which includes SIDBI as a lead partner. Mr Amitabh Shrivastava apprised the minister about global best practices to increase relationship between the Industry and the R&D institutions in North America, Europe and Asia.
Dr Harsh Vardhan said to be keen to support business initiatives like CSIR-Tech that are self funded autonomous companies that are sure to give impetus, at the ground level, to realize the dream of the Prime Minister of India to create more jobs through the science and technology led manufacturing businesses.
CSIR-Tech’s board of directors includes 4 Padma awardees and industry veterans like Dr Mohan Das Pai, Mr Saurabh Srivastava, Ms Luis Miranda, Dr S Sivaram, Dr Vijay Mohanan and Chief General Manager of the State Bank of India, Venkat Nageswar.
