Dr. Rashi Gupta, a woman tech entrepreneur based in Thane, Maharashtra, India, was a leader in the industry with expertise in energy storage solutions. The case discusses her journey from 2009 to 2023 with her start-up, Vision Mechatronics Private Limited (VMPL), a leading technology company in robotics, renewable energy, and energy storage systems. The company initially offered a standard range of products but eventually realized the need to deliver customized solutions to customers. Gupta faced a dilemma in deciding on vendors for implementing new designs and technology at scale. VMPL’s existing vendors lacked the required technical skills but had a proven relationship with the company, while new vendors would be equipped to produce the new designs but VMPL was as yet uncertain of their reliability, consistency, communication, and coordination.
Velmenni, founded in 2014, was India’s first start-up company to venture into the realm of light communication and carry out research and development for commercializing light fidelity (LiFi) technology. After overcoming various technological and market hurdles, Velmenni had been able to make a few advancements by deploying pilot products with potential customers. However, the company lacked a continuous source of revenue. At this critical juncture when Velmenni was making progress with customers and feeling hopeful of getting substantial funding, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Investors who had committed funds didn’t move forward and Solanki lost most of his team members. The chief executive officer now faced the critical question of Velmenni’s very existence. Asking the team members to leave and selling the technology (licensing or assigning it to someone else) would provide him some cash as well as time to think about his next move. But should he instead restructure the team and get more paid pilot projects, to increase the chances of commercialization and investment?
The Wadhwani Research Centre for Bioengineering (WRCB) at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), established in 2014 with support from the Wadhwani Foundation, entered its transformative second phase after a successful initial five years. With over 40 professors from nine departments involved, WRCB’s phase one had yielded 316 publications and 38 patent applications and spawned two entrepreneurial ventures. Heading phase two were Debjani Paul, the professor in charge, and Abdur Rub, the chief executive officer, who were focused on propelling deep-tech research toward commercialization. As the disruptive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided in late 2021, Paul and Rub looked toward the future with new hope and clear goal: to enable academic researchers to secure follow-on funding crucial for sustaining momentum beyond WRCB’s initial catalytic support. This initiative aimed to cement WRCB’s status as a global leader in bioengineering translational research, bridging academia and industry to overcome funding gaps and nurture innovation in a dynamic academic setting.
On January 3, 2017, the principal investigator at the Biomedical Engineering and Technology Innovation Centre (BETIC), in India’s Indian Institute of Technology Bombay was considering the next steps for a newly developed product. BETIC was a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional translational research and development network in the medical technology sector that acted as a running partner for innovators and entrepreneurs. The core vision of BETIC was to create global success stories of indigenous medical devices by providing systematic guidance and support to innovators developing medical devices. The principal investigator and his team had developed an indigenous and innovative smart stethoscope from the ideation stage to a functional prototype. The next critical challenge was how to commercialize the product and ensure that it could deliver the maximum amount of social impact.