In the3rd edition of ARIIA 2021 or the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements released on December 29 , Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has been recognized as the most innovative educational institute in India for the third consecutive year. Under ARIIA, an initiative of the Ministry of Education (MoE), Govt. of India and implemented through AICTE and MoE’s Innovation Cell launched three years ago, all major higher educational institutions and universities in India are ranked on indicators related to promotion and support of “Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development” amongst students and faculties.
MoS Education Dr Subhas Sarkar virtually announced the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) 2021. Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE, Shri Rakesh Ranjan, Additional Secretary (Technical Education), Dr. Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer, Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell and Dr Mohit Gambhir, Innovation Director, Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell were also present during the release of ARIIA ranking.
On this occasion, Dr. Sarkar said that ARIIA ranking will certainly inspire Indian institutions to reorient their mind-set and build ecosystems to encourage high quality research, innovation and entrepreneurship in their campuses. Giving emphasis on promoting innovation to achieve a $5 trillion economy by year 2025, Dr Sarkar said that more than quantity, the institute should focus on quality of innovations & research. This will help us achieve the Atmanirbhar Bharat in true sense.
While referring to India’s consistent growth in Innovation and Start-up, Dr Sarkar said that India is one of the largest higher educational systems in the world. There are ample opportunities for higher educational institutions to play the role of enabler to drive Indian innovation and start-up ecosystem. A concerted effort by our higher educational institutions is required towards inculcating the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among our students and to prepare faculty as innovators, out of the box thinkers, creative problem solvers, entrepreneurs, and job creators. This will definitely bring a revolution not only at economic level but also at the social, environmental front.
The 3rd edition of ARIIA 2021 saw participation from 3551 HEIs registered, 1438 institutions (including all IITs, NITs, IISc, etc.). This 3rd edition of ARIIA also introduced a special framework for non-technical institutions that further strengthen the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem in Indian higher education institutions. ARIIA 2021 classify participating institutions into under two major categories; Technical and Non-technical.
The technical category has following 5 sub-categories;
- CFTIs, Central University, & Institute of National Importance
- State University & Deemed University (Govt. & Govt. Aided)
- Govt. College/Institution (Govt. & Govt. Aided)
- University & Deemed University (Self-Finance/Private)
- Private College/Institute (Self-Finance/Private) Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements
The newly introduced non-technical category classify HEIs into two sub-categories;
- CFIs/Central University/Institute of National Importance (Non-Technical)
- General (Non-Technical)
All these submitted applications were subjected to multiple stages of screening, validation evaluation as per the ARIIA framework and guideline developed by the evaluation committee. Based on the score and range developed for the parameters and sub-parameters and category wise score and rank prepared for HEIs. Top-performing technical and non-technical HEIs assigned with a rank and band of ‘Outstanding’ whereas all the remaining technical and nontechnical institutions in each category assigned a band of either ‘Excellent’ ‘Performer’, ‘Promising’ or ‘Beginner’ to encourage their effort and participation in ARIIA.
Chairman, AICTE, Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe said that indigenous version of innovation and entrepreneurship ranking initiative designed through ARIIA by accounting both national and international contexts, will not only help our Higher Educational Institutions to demonstrate their efforts but also orient them in setting goals at institute level to make India move further up in world rankings.
Highlighting the efforts of Innovation Cell in releasing the ARIIA Ranking, Additional Secretary (Technical Education), Rakesh Ranjan said that ARIIA has set a tone and direction for our institutions. It will help in making them globally competitive and front runner in innovation and entrepreneurship.
Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras, said, “We are delighted to be adjudged the Most Innovative Institute for the third time in a row since inception of the Atal Rankings on Innovation. IIT Madras places a lot of emphasis on innovations among its students and faculty, which has resulted in a very successful and fast-growing deep technology startup ecosystem in the country.”
IIT Madras has an ecosystem that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship at multiple levels. These include:
Ø Nirmaan, a pre-incubator to nurture student ideas mature towards incubation. Some of the startups that came from Nirmaan have been successfully incubated and raised over USD 1 Million
Ø IIT Madras Incubation Cell (IITMIC), India’s leading deep-tech startup incubator that has incubated more than 240 Startups that have a combined valuation of US$ 1.5 Billion and created more than 5,200 Jobs
Ø IIT Madras Research Park, which works with more than 75 R&D Clients, hosts Eight Centers of Excellence and Five Incubators besides engaging more than 3,000 professionals in its 1.2 million Sq.Ft of Workspace
Ø Gopalakrishnan Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which builds capacity in researchers to maximise the impact of deep-tech research through scalable start-ups
The IITMIC houses incubators such as Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre (HTIC), Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) and Bio-Tech incubators. The IITMIC-Incubated startups are in sectors such as Manufacturing, IoT, energy/renewables, healthcare/ medical devices, water, edu-tech/skill development, agri-tech, robotics, AI, ML and, data analytics, among others.
The Centre For Innovation (CFI) at IIT Madras is a student body that has augmented the ‘tech’ space in the institute wherein their projects have gone on to produce high-profile start-ups and internationally acclaimed competition teams. ‘Nirmaan’ seeks out students with ideas that have commercial potential and puts them through a one-year pre-incubator programme.
