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Sep. 20, 2005 – Rahul Patwardhan says the biggest problem facing the development of nanotechnology in India today is neither equipment nor education nor public distrust.
Rather, says the president and chief executive of private-equity group IndiaCo, it’s money — in particular, the venture capital funds necessary to further grow companies that are already emerging as a result of nanotech research and development.
The fact that venture funding is the bottleneck is a telling sign of how successful India has been at encouraging innovation. “In the last year we’ve seen six or seven new companies created,” said Patwardhan. “Several of these companies already have products.…We were kind of expecting this to happen two years from now.”
Patwardhan and other experts cite a variety of trends to explain the recent growth. There’s globalization and outsourcing, of course, and a rash of companies looking to cut costs by moving research abroad. But that’s hardly the only force at work. India also benefits from a tradition of excellence in science and technology education, an English-speaking workforce, and western-style patent protection. The mixture of explicit government support and a cadre of expatriates returning home plants the seeds for decades of nano-powered progress.
Tim Harper, chief executive of nanotech consultancy Cientifica Ltd., says the benefit of outsourcing R&D to India is obvious. “Think of the costs of clinical trials,” he said, citing the figure of $1 million for a modest trial. “In India you can get the same work done for $100,000.”
This summer, Cientifica announced the launch of a joint venture with India’s YashNanotech to outsource nanotechnology R&D. Cientifica will serve as the public international face of the venture, while Yash will manage the Indian operation. In addition, says Harper, the venture will look to incubate its own technologies, specifically in health care and water treatment.
Cientifica is hardly alone. In June, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and nanomaterials provider NEI Corp. established a cooperative research program in nanotechnology with the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials in Hyderabad. The program is slated to explore ways to make metals harder, ceramics lighter and stronger, and protective coatings more durable.
And in July, Veeco Instruments opened a nanoscience center in Bangalore in partnership with the Jawaharlal Nehru Center (JNC) for Advanced Scientific Research. Veeco, which makes atomic force microscopes and other nanotechnology research equipment, sees not just a new R&D outsource location but also a burgeoning market for its products.
“Our equipment fits well into manufacturing as well as research,” explained John Bulman, Veeco’s executive vice president of worldwide sales and foreign operations. By putting cutting-edge equipment on the ground at JNC, Bulman said Veeco gets its wares in front of some of the best and brightest scientific minds of the country. As they and their students move out into industry and other research labs, so such thinking goes, they are more likely to bring along a preference for the tools with which they are familiar. Veeco contributed two AFMs and an optical profiler to the research center.
Not just smaller outfits see opportunities in India. Large corporations like Hewlett-Packard, Siemens and GE set up R&D facilities in India in recent years. GE, for its part, employs more than 2,200 people at its Bangalore R&D center, the largest of its global R&D centers outside the United States.
These and other organizations working in India are receiving strong support from the Indian government, especially from President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. A physicist by training, Kalam delivered an April 2005 address at a meeting of nanotech researchers and development officials where he declared that he was convinced “that nano is the greatest building block” for health care and in structural materials, as well as in electronics and automation. He added that it will “become the platform for new cutting-edge technologies.”
He also called on the country’s technologists to develop a roadmap that would give its efforts a more specific shape and direction. If they did so, he promised, he would be willing “to give the needed thrust.”
Various groups have taken such advice to heart. Private equity group IndiaCo set up a non-profit subsidiary called IndiaNano two years ago in order to foster more nanotechnology research. It runs joint R&D programs between labs and commercial entities, functioning as a sort of domestic clearinghouse for nanotech commercialization efforts, and it organizes industry conferences.
Other groups have also begun organizing conferences. One, an international coalition of scientists and executives, is collaborating with the Associated Chambers of Commerce in Delhi to hold a conference for late this year or early next year to work on a nanotech roadmap.
“It’s an attempt to put all the leadership on the same platform,” said Sujeet Kumar, a senior scientist at Greatbatch Technologies, headquartered in upstate New York, who is working on the conference effort. “We are telling people in the U.S. who want to manufacture in India, or sell a product there, to come.”
If Kumar’s contacts are anything like Cientifica, NEI or Veeco, they may have multiple reasons. Veeco’s Bulman says the company stands to get a return on its investment far beyond just growing Asian sales. It also intends to get helpful information about using its tools for biotech and life sciences research, areas that Cientifica’s Harper says are expanding rapidly in India.
“If you go to a place like Johns Hopkins,” Bulman said, “there are AFMs in there but you don’t know too much about what’s going on.” By contrast, he says the spirit among researchers in India is more open and they are more willing to freely share with Veeco the results of their research and the techniques they might employ with the equipment. “It’s their way of showing the world that the U.S. doesn’t have a patent on brains.”