CHENNAI: The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, in a statement on Wednesday said that it has launched a ‘Centre for Research on Start-Ups and Risk Financing’ (CREST) to provide academic and thought leadership in innovation, entrepreneurship and risk capital.
The initiative also aims to create a unique world-class data repository on Indian start-ups and ventures to address a major hurdle for engaging in high-quality research. This information resource would be made accessible for researchers and policymakers that can result in top-tier publications, the statement said, adding,
“With risk investment in Indian technology start-ups touching $68 Billion (?4,76,000 crore approx) in the period between 2011-20, academic research and thought leadership can play an important role in sustaining and furthering this growth in entrepreneurship.”
The Vision of CREST include, being globally recognised as a leading centre of scholarly research in the areas of creation, development, and financing of innovation, start-ups, and entrepreneurship; and cross country collaborative research, resulting in the use of unique data sets on start-ups and venture capital that increases the chances of breakthrough findings Delivering the inaugural keynote lecture of CREST on Tuesday Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School, said, “Entrepreneurs with great ideas in developing countries cannot rely on the usual trust-building foundations. Assuming the existence of these phantom factors predisposes ventures not to succeed at scale.”