Indian start-ups shine at Purdue: Mitchell E Daniels

How is Purdue University building an ecosystem for start-ups?

The Purdue Start-up Fund began in February 2016, and is proving to be an important enabler. This is $10 million resource provides financial support to help Purdue entrepreneurs create and grow their start-ups. The Fund is an opportunity for our alumni to become even more engaged by financially supporting the translation of Purdue innovations to the public.

What kind of representation is seen by budding entrepreneurs of Indian origin at Purdue?

In the Class of 2016, there were two Purdue start-ups out of 27 that were primarily driven by Indian entrepreneurs. There is Pharma Printer LLC by Arun Giridhar, an Associate Research Scientist at Purdue and an IIT-M graduate. This Purdue affiliated start-up is commercialising a portable inkjet printer to produce precise, personalized medication dosages faster than traditional methods, which could improve overall drug effectiveness and decrease patient side-effects.

There is Simplexity Simulations by Pradeep Kumar Gurunathan, who is a graduate student in chemistry from Chennai. This start-up is developing molecular modeling simulation software that could help pharmaceutical companies more accurately predict the crystal structure of a drug once produced, helping maintain a consistent drug quality and save costs when developing new drugs. There also is a third start-up, called MBAville, which was formed by Purdue students based on their own ideas. Arun S Bharadwaj, an MBA student in Purdue’s Krannert School of Management, and Jiaqi Wang, a graduate student in computer graphics technology in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, formed MBAville to commercialise a gaming platform. MBAville’s first game, Project Quant, teaches accounting, analytics and economics in a pizzeria setting.

How do you perceive representation by Indian origin entrepreneurs to increase going ahead?

The total number of Indian students at Purdue increased from 1,681 last fall to 1,898 (now representing 20.4% of our international student body — up from 18.2% last year). We have 881 Indian undergraduates and 1,017 grad and professional students at Purdue. We are the No. 1 institution for Indian undergraduate students in the US and we do see Indian students beginning to spread out among other disciplines. For example, just two years ago, nearly 50% of Indian graduate students were studying Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering or Management. Now, only 35% of our Indian graduate student body are in these three fields, with others enrolled in a variety of our 200+ offerings.

With 1898 Indian students at Purdue, there are ample opportunities for them to work with Purdue’s Foundry and Anvil to develop their start-up ideas. In addition, Purdue is using the J1 visa programme as a mechanism to bring talented international entrepreneurs to the community.

Are start-ups going to drive the job market in the future?

To an extent, yes. Start-ups are the innovation engine, but experience tells us that most amount of job growth occurs in second-stage companies (with 10 to 99 employees).

PURSUING DREAMS

Purdue University in the United States is one of the world’s leading educators. Not just a powerhouse of education, Purdue has also been actively incubating start-ups at its campuses. Arun Giridhar, an IIT-M graduate, is commercialising a portable inkjet printer to produce precise, personalised medication dosages faster than traditional methods. Pradeep Kumar Gurunathan, graduate in Chemistry from Chennai, is developing molecular modeling simulation software to help pharma firm predict the crystal structure of a drug more accurately