Prof. Satyanarayanan Seshadri | "We used to call it the kitchen that cooks startups" | Ep. 4

Hi, my name is Amrit. We've heard that IIT Madras is the best place to build. [upbeat music] So we've come down to the Sudha and Shankar Innovation Hub. We want to meet some people. These are builders. We want to talk to them about their work, and also ask them, "What makes IIT Madras the best place to build?" [upbeat music] They're not really trying to get rid of carbon.

It's expected that in the next fifteen years, given the acceleration of AI in common usage, this number will get to about fourteen percent. If it gets to fourteen percent, this will immediately start becoming one of the top two sectors of GHG contribution.

Scary to even think about it. [upbeat music] Hi, I am with Dr. Satya Seshadri. We are sitting in CFI, and we are discussing, um... We have a lot to discuss on our plate today. Maybe, Professor, um, of course, firstly, welcome.

Thank you.

Uh, and maybe what we can do is, since we are sitting in Nirmaan and CFI, we can talk about this first. Um, from when I was in campus, we didn't have CFI or Nirmaan. Um, and then there was CFI, and now there's Nirmaan, and now it feels like there's an entire innovation stack. So can you lead us through and explain to us what this is?

Sure. Um, as you rightly said, CFI was created in 2007, thereabout, uh, to become a student tinkering lab, just more of a, a maker space and after-class program for students to come and explore building, uh, the whole thing about what they can achieve with their hands. And I think that gradually led to there, in about 2013, '14 timeframe, a couple of these students wanting to create, uh, enterprises out of it, which is a natural progression. So Nirmaan was created as a club within CFI, just like there are how many other clubs. There's a product design club, there is a, um, genomics club, or a AI club. So many clubs are created based on special interest groups of students. Nirmaan was created as a pre-incubator. So what it really meant was to provide some kind of a platform for students to learn how to create startups, and in the process, how to approach market, how to talk to customers, and so on, and created this with certain set of mentorship. Like, for the product design and others, there is mentorship available within campus, the technical mentors, the faculty advisors, and so on. For this case, we had to go outside to bring in alumni who have created companies or led large corporate positions to come back and support these students, and that's how Nirmaan was created. And what we recognized-

Hold on, hold on one second. So CFI is a student maker space, and there are clubs in CFI?

Yeah.

And these clubs-- How are these clubs organized?

Clubs, typically, uh, you put it together or students come together and create a club with, um, I would say, a special interest group. So, for example, if a series of students are interested in product design, there is a product design club that comes in, and they create a charter, they create a, a set of projects they want to do, with the goal of, uh, realizing something. And then they come and seek some funding from the CFI student administrative body and the faculty advisor to say, "Can I realize some of these projects?" Um, it can come and go depending on, uh, the interest of students. Right now, for example, sustainability, campus sustainability is being created as a club. There's a lot of special interest groups that are being formed, primarily because now sustainability is a, a buzzword or a keyword-