Following up on Shamnad’s succinct and timely editorial on India’s engagement with the world of IP, I pick on one of the issues he raised for this post — innovation in India, and the need to create incentives for the abundant and sometimes latent creativity that lies within the Indian people. Appropriately enough, WIPO (which has a new logo incidentally) has as its theme for this year’s celebrations, “Innovation – Linking the World”.
Towards this, we bring you a very special interview — I recently had the chance to catch up via email with two young and enthusiastic entrepreneurs from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT-D), who’ve been early beneficiaries of the incubator project at the institute, and over the past eight years, have created a miracle of sorts, and promise great and wonderful things ahead for innovation in India. (We’ve reported on the IITs and innovation earlier, but this is the first interview we have with a product of that system)
A bit about the interviewees (from here) —
Dipinder drives future growth strategy and business planning in the company, after having led KritiKal for the first five years as the founding CEO. He holds Masters and Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Delhi, with specialisation in computer vision. Dipinder also devotes considerable time and effort towards Political and Governance reforms in India, and other developmental issues. He is a member of the Freedom Team of India, and other NGOs/efforts. He holds a Masters in Public Administration (MPA – Public and Economic Policy) from the London School of Economics (LSE) and Sciences-Po, Paris.
Nishant is primarily responsible for giving technology leadership to KritiKal Solutions. He holds Masters and Bachelors in Computer Science & Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. With his focus on the long term vision and strong background in technology fundamentals, Nishant has driven KritiKal Solutions into a team with right balance of depth and breadth. He has been the key driver for building technical delivery processes within the organization.
On to the interview, then:
Q. What is KritiKal?
A. The word KritiKal is made up of two hindi words – Kriti and Kal meaning Creations for Tomorrow. We are a technology design house.
We provide services and products in two technology areas: embedded electronics and computer imaging. Over the last seven years we have served clients in varied domains including telecom, banking, security and surveillance, defense, traffic and transport, virtual reality and entertainment etc., mainly in India and US.
The solutions we have delivered include a mobile network based device to prevent vehicle thefts, a network router, a very high speed encryption device, camera/video-projections based virtual reality environment for Gandhi Smriti in Delhi, a disaster prevention device to monitor crane loads and tilts, camera based solutions for currency counting, traffic monitoring and analysis, sophisticated access control for containers entering/exiting ports etc.
KritiKal Zenscan – our vehicle underside scanning solution – has more than 30 installations in India and neighboring countries(1). Trazer – our traffic analysis solution – is being used by the top traffic research agencies in India. We have recently launched camera based license plate readers (for Indian conditions!) and hope to have several deployments soon. Q. How did KritiKal come into being? Was there one single product idea that started it all? How did the idea come into being? Was it part of your academic pursuits? Or was it the product of peripheral research?
A. KritiKal was founded in August 2002 by twelve of us – seven graduating students and five professors from the Dept. of Computer Science and Engg., IIT Delhi. One of the triggers for KritiKal was a talk introducing the business incubation program at IIT-D by Dr Sengupta, who was the MD of the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT, IITD) at that time. Prof Balakrishanan, the Head of our department and other professors encouraged us students to consider setting up a business enterprise making use of the incubation centre.
We did have some initial product ideas in our minds. They were generally around the thesis projects we were doing. However, these were not the core drivers for which we wanted to do KritiKal. Creating a hi-tech company in India (2), doing technology work of our choice with people we admired the most and ofcourse .. the possibility of making millions in future was what drove us to come together and form KritiKal.
Q. Would you say there’s a “culture of innovation” in your institution?
A. Yes and No. Yes, in terms of world class research. No, in terms of commercialization of this research and active transfer to Industry, market. However, there is a positive trend. KritiKal was the first student-faculty led company to be incubated within IITD. We have been followed by 20 odd other companies in different technology disciplines.
Q. Did the in-house incubation cell help you research on your idea? In what way? What kind of assistance did you receive – financial, infrastructural, advisory, creating a vision document, roadmap, etc.?
A. We came into existence because of the incubator. It was critical in terms of expanding our option space after graduation – we could think of setting up our own business enterprise, instead of pursuing doctoral studies or taking up a job in a firm. It helped likeminded entrepreneurial folks come together and discuss business ideas.
The incubator initially was not much more than the physical space and work stations. However, we did receive crucial advisory help in terms of business planning, venture funding, incorporating the company and understanding it as a legal entity etc. We could speak to experienced Alumni who were into business or venture capital, and clear our doubts/hesitations.
Q. Were there similar projects among your classmates and colleagues? How have those projects evolved?
A. There have been many enterprises founded by our classmates and colleagues, including ex-employees. Many of them first gained work experience before starting their ventures, and in such cases the companies started outside the incubator. The projects – both outside and inside the incubator – have followed different trajectories. Some could not survive beyond a few months, some were successful and are growing fast, others are surviving and growing at slow pace. But we are yet to see a truly global success. The seeds have been sown though and it is a matter of time!
Q. Did you/do you receive IPR-related advice on your work/products? In fact, I am curious to know if any form of IPR-training was part of your regular academic curriculum.
A. A little bit, off and on. For example, there were/are seminars which are advertised and one could go to them if interested.
There was no IPR training in the formal curriculum, atleast for our course (BTech, MTech in Computer Science & Engg.). I know that the Department of Management Studies at IIT offers courses/modules on IPR, entrepreneurship. I am not sure whether this is optional or a core module for the MBA program. I will doubt whether something like this is part of a core module for the technology degrees.
Q. It’s been quite some time since you started the company. What is your present professional relationship with your parent institution? Do you still receive some form of support from them? 
A. In terms of formal relationship, IIT (and FITT) still hold some shares in KritiKal which we are gradually buying back. As five professors are founding members, and continue to be active promoters, members of the board and shareholders, we continue to have interaction with students, alumni, and relevant research projects at IIT. In addition, we continue to gain from the IIT ecosystem, including the alumni network. It’s a win-win relationship.
Q. How key is building your IP portfolio to your business development? What does that look like now?
A. The strongest trigger comes from potential investors when one is looking to raise funds. Formal patents, and other intellectual property rights , helps in such cases. Investors, and even we ourselves, would want to be reasonably sure that we will not land up into difficulties in terms of IP – before we go ahead and invest in a major product development.
In general, we are always conscious of the IP we are developing. The extent to which it is packaged and legally formalized and protected depends on the business potential we see out of the exercise. However, it is one of the things for which it is difficult to estimate returns, especially in the short term.
Q. How do you see Kritikal evolving in the times to come?
A. We feel that we have lot of intellectual property and tapped potential which we want to leverage now for strong growth. We envision KritiKal to be a leading global technology products and services provider. At the moment, we believe we have several IP components which can be packaged and formalized. We may try filing patents etc around them in future, once there is clarity on commercialization plans.
1 Zenscan is being commercialized by KritiKal Securescan Pvt Ltd.
2 Infosys and Narayan Murti were our idols. But we wanted to raise the bar in terms of the level of original technology which was being delivered by Indian IT enterprises.
Surely, this is one team that personifies the innovation that we hear about ever so often. SpicyIP wishes KritiKal all the best for the future, and the global successes that it looks to acheive. On our part, we continue to look for many more such success stories, of which we are sure there are many. Drop a line or two about them our way, and we shall be glad to share them with the rest of our readers.
Thanks for the article and your good words Sumathi. Cheers!