Ideas that lead to soonicorns!

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Executive Chairperson, Biocon & Biocon Biologics, recently spoke to the students of CSIR-IMTECH, Chandigarh on the topic of ‘IDEAS THAT LEAD TO SOONICORNS!’

In her talk, Ms Mazumdar-Shaw shares some very inspiring stories of how entrepreneurs in India have gone about building Soonicorns, or Soon to be Unicorns, which are highly valued start-ups that have successfully grown to attract valuations of over a few hundred million dollars and Unicorns, which are start-ups that have achieved a valuation of $1 billion.

“When embarking on an entrepreneurial journey, the first thing to consider is whether your idea can generate IP. If an idea doesn’t generate IP, then it’s just an idea,” she said.

Ms Mazumdar-Shaw also said it is important for every academic institute to have a technology transfer division because understanding business development and the value of patents is a must.

As an important step towards encouraging entrepreneurship, she spoke about the need for the government to incentivise industry to work with academia. “If a weighted tax deduction is given on R&D done in industrial labs, then a higher-weighted tax deduction should be attributed to work done in academic labs in an industry-academia partnership. That is the way to create better industry-academia linkages.”

Ms Mazumdar-Shaw believes that India needs to tap its large reservoir of entrepreneurial energy because investing in breakthrough ideas and embracing entrepreneurship as an economic model of growth will unleash the power of innovation to ensure a better life for its billion-plus citizens.