Funding dreams

Updated on: Monday, November 30, 2009

Getting funds for a business plan or a project is perhaps one of the toughest aspects of seeing your dreams take off. The idea could be a successful innovation or germinate into a business venture later, but some financial help can make a lot of difference.

Your little savings or the money pooled in from family and friends are not always sufficient in most cases. Also, chances of getting a seed grant from venture capitalists or logistic sponsorship from companies is difficult when you are still in college with no major experience to show.

Then how can more ideas come out? While some prolong their project till they have sufficient support, a few others bury their idea. Thanks to institutions, of late most universities have started allocating funds for innovations, which are promising.

For the students

The Centre for Technology Development and Transfer of Anna University, for instance, launched ‘Student Innovative Projects' from this academic year where it offers a seed fund of Rs. 25,000 for a six-month project.

The exceptionally good projects have chances to get more funding or the scalable projects will once again be evaluated for a prize. While 46 selected proposals from different branches received the grant in the first edition, the second batch has only 26 proposals. Faculty say as more students apply for grant, the selection process also gets tough.

Motivating factor

Take the instance of G. Saravana Kumar and M. Karthikeyan, second year students of M.E. (Transportation).

Besides their regular project done as part of their Masters programme, the two are also working on a project that would help reduce the delay time of buses on signals. Their major motivator is the seed grant.

“In our curriculum project we get no funding, so it matters a lot when you are confident your idea will click and have finance to carry it forward. Otherwise you are limiting you expense or extending the project till you have the money,” says Saravana. His break up on the project so far: Rs. 6,000 for the video graphic survey, Rs. 7,000 hiring 20 students to help in volume count of vehicle and Rs. 3,000 buying electronic devices.

Great ideas

Similarly, it's only since a couple of years that the Centre for Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research (IC&SR), an independent section of IIT-Madras, decided to allocate Rs. 2 lakh for every student project. Entries for which the centre says is seeing an “upward trend”.

“Money should not be a constraint when you have students coming with good ideas but the challenge is to see a research culture at the academic level,” says professor Job Kurian, Dean, IC&SR.

Hindustan University and Satyabama University are a few others who are funding innovations, either partly or if the team project wins a national or international competition for the college.

More funds

For students of institutions who do not have access to such funds, government run bodies such as Tamil Nadu State Council for Science and Technology come as of ray of hope.

The popularity of the initiative is evident from the fact that TNSCST has traditionally been awarding 150 student projects, but in 2008 over 3,000 applications were received of which 160 were short-listed for the grant.

“But in 2009, 300 projects were given grant,” says S. Vincent, member secretary, TNSCST. Also, from the Rs. 5,000 as scholarship, it has now been increased to Rs. 10,000, he says.

Motivate students

Mr. Vincent says that the idea is to motivate students to take up pure science as well as think innovatively.

The majority of these funded projects also have the team being guided with a faculty member and reviews being done periodically.

Some even become good enough to apply for an IP right or become the property of the college for future reference.

So, could yours be a funded venture?

“Yes, provided it is an idea in a multi-disciplinary approach, with an affordable budget and with a good academic record,” says Roy Chowdhury, Dean, Mechanical Engineering, Hindustan University.

Funding dreams

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