‘Our Indian students are the most entrepreneurial'

The Hindu

22-05-2025

Imperial College, London, recently announced establishing its Indian Hub in Bengaluru to strengthen scientific, educational and innovation partnerships between India and U.K. Its fourth international hub after San Francisco, Singapore and Accra, the hub in Bengaluru titled 'Imperial Global India' comes following multiple collaborations of the university with institutions such as IISc and NCBS.
Dr. Elena Dieckmann, Academic Co-Director for Imperial Global India and Ben Mumby-Croft, Director of Entrepreneurship at Imperial, were in Bengaluru to take part in 'Climate Dialogues' hosted by the university in partnership with NSRCEL, the incubation arm of IIM Bangalore.
The Hindu caught up with them to understand about the larger vision of the hub, how startups in both countries could benefit from such programmes and how India is emerging as a critical destination for global startups.
About the entrepreneurial programme at Imperial College, London
Ben: The Imperial Enterprise Lab is a dedicated support service for student, staff and alumni entrepreneurs. We're basically there to help any student who has an idea and wants to pursue that. It's not necessarily about starting your business, it's about being inventive, following your curiosity, and exploring an interesting idea.
Elena: We have a portfolio of different programmes at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. And what we often see there is that, especially postgraduate students who do a master's with us, they come from a lot of different countries. So, it's highly international, and they often work in teams. This is really where the innovation happens, because it almost gives them the confidence to explore really things that are out of their comfort zone.
Usually, our Indian students are the most entrepreneurial. So, it's fantastic to observe that, because you can always be sure that something will come from it.
Ben: We support over 2,000 individuals every year, working on about 500 ideas - projects, not companies. And then we see 30 to 40 start-ups emerging. That's by running over 20-plus different programmes and services.
Focus areas of the Enterprise Lab
Ben: It is kind of sector agnostic, because we're working with very early stage ideas. So, we work across all different kinds of ideas and sectors. What is interesting though is that when you kind of aggregate that and look at the programmes that we run, they tend to sort of separate into two strong themes.
One theme is health tech and med-tech. The other really dominant theme is clean tech.
Elena: In the clean tech space, it could be anything from behavior change to waste recycling, new ways of storing energy, flood defense... It's not just energy-related; our students are usually trying to solve really interesting niche problems.
Can you talk about the Imperial Global India hub and about your association with NSRCEL?
Ben: We're launching a global office in Bengaluru. As part of the launch of the new hub, we choose to bring startups in the U.K. that are interested in the Indian market to being, have them be here physically and connect them with people.
We find climate-tech start-ups from the U.K., all of which expressed strong interest in the Indian market. The event at NSRCEL is about having those founders to be able to pitch to an audience of NSRCEL stakeholders. It's not necessarily to raise investments, but to talk about what they are working on and find out if anybody in the room can help or connect them with someone.
Elena: I think more and more of our start-ups will realise that India is a fantastic destination to venture to. At the same time, I think the U.K. might also be very interesting for Indian start-ups.I hope that things will pick up now with the trade agreement, that we're going to see more dynamic regulations coming in place, that the barriers to entry are reduced and that we can have a more intense exchange between both countries and our innovation ecosystems.
Do you see the trend already?
Elena: I can tell you just from my observation, We have about 900 Indian students at the moment at Imperial College. And many of them are very entrepreneurial and come to us. Then they see that there's a huge potential in India because you have the best software engineers, the best data scientists and amazing coders. They can rapidly scale their start-ups faster than in the U.K., potentially. So often they go back to India, also to explore more economic manufacturing, and launch their start-up in India. It's also naturally happening because we are increasing the number of Indian students now.
Ben: Post-Brexit, there is a real impetus on driving growth globally. So, we are seeing a renewed focus on helping people to start here and can grow internationally.
What do you think about the role of emerging technologies, be in the U.K. or in India, in helping address climate and public health challenges globally?
Elena: I was in a research project at Varanashi farms in Mangalore. It is an innovation farm, and they do loads of soil engineering using microbiology. My impression is that India is much, much richer in agritech and sustainable farming innovation. That's really impressive. I would say just as an observation from the field.
Ben: We went for decades without having a global pandemic. And suddenly we realized it could strike at any time. Untap is a startup which has developed Incredible stuff. They've developed a device that will analyse the wastewater coming out of buildings for a whole range of pathogens and viruses. It provides real time data to the building managers about the risk profile. We need these kinds of innovations to help us protect from future challenges.
About other partnerships in Bengaluru/India
Elena: We have an MOU with IISc and we're looking to expand on that with different research initiatives. We are also looking to work more with their enterprise lab.
Our academics have been working with a lot of different researchers in IITs and other Indian research institutions already. We are trying to expand those collaborations and also support them going forward. A lot of things have been happening, but there was never an idea of a hub, which is now finally happening.
There is also a new collaboration with NCBS to facilitate the AI and Science Global Fellowship. Two fellows will work between NCBS and Imperial College, but that's more on the research side.
In terms of student collaboration, we're trying to link more enterprise labs. We're really keen to connect innovation ecosystems.
Ben: We run a programme called Global Challenge Lab, which has about 25 university partners. We've worked with the Institute of Technology, Madras and have had Indian students from that institution coming on to the Global Challenge Lab programme. There has been lot such activities, but the hub really helps to focus the attention, make more connections and generate more activity.
Specifics of the partnership with NSRCEL?
Elena: In the meeting with NSRCEL, one of the things that we really discussed was empowerment of female entrepreneurs. And that's also something that the Enterprise Lab is promoting with WE Innovate.
Ben: It's an amazing programme for women-led startups. We have been doing it for 10 years. NSRCEL is also really strong in supporting female entrepreneurs. So, we would love to collaborate on that topic and expand what we're doing in the U.K.
Going forward, would you be looking at more themes?
Elena: For the Imperial Global India Hub, there are actually three different themes at the moment - climate and clean tech, health, and emerging tech, which encompasses quantum AI and machine learning.
What is the larger vision for the hub?
Ben: I think the larger vision for the global hub is to take forward what we've already started, to amplify it and accelerate it. Academic collaborations, research collaborations, linking with corporate industrial partners and joining the ecosystems are all important because it's about exchanging best practices around the world to support startups in the future.
We'd love to see the hub being a portal into the U.K. or into London for Indian startups. Similarly, we'd love to see it being a conduit for startups to come to the U.K.