“India Has Labs, Money, And Startups — Here’s Why They Struggle To Work Together”, Swarajya, May 16, 2026
“Walk into the automotive lab at an engineering institute in southern India, and the first thing you notice is the engines. Typically donated by a major Indian OEM (original equipment manufacturer) towards no particular project and no embedded engineer acting as a “mentor.” Just dispensable hardware tossed over a wall.
Walls. I have run into them again and again, building labs for universities and watching up close how the system around those labs fails to connect.
In India, a typical collaboration between a company and university goes as follows. The company donates equipment for a lab or writes a cheque. A professor accepts it — either as part of a standalone collaboration with the company, or to satisfy a government requirement to get funds for a research project — and issues a press release…….”
Read full article at swarajyamag.com
