SRM to set up tech and research park by 2027, along the lines of the IIT Madras research park

SRMIST plans to establish a tech and research park by 2027, fostering innovation and supporting start-ups, especially in rural areas.

Students from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities are quite keen on start-ups, but many are constrained either by limited access to funding or geographical barriers, according to Shantanu Sudhakar Patil, an orthopedic physician and direction of entrepreneurship and innovation at the SRM Institute of Science and Technology (SRMIST). In order to bridge this gap, SRMIST has established a rural-tech incubator at its agricultural campus, he said.

He was speaking The Hindu Deep Tech Summit 2026 on Tuesday (April 7, 2026), in a fireside chat with R. Kalpana Sastry, a scientist, agri food innovation consultant, and executive director of the Society for Technology Managament (STEM), on the topic of ‘Leveraging a multi-disciplinary university ecosystem for enabling the deep tech revolution’.

“We are open to anyone who approaches us with an innovative idea, strong team and adequately developed business plan, who doesn’t have to be a faculty member or a final year student.. Apart from this, we are encouraging students from all colleges, including students from schools, to build start-ups,” said Dr. Patil. “We have also introduced design thinking for faculty, so that they can identify the problem first before looking for a solution,” he added.

Citing data on research and development investments in India, Dr. Sastry said that though there is a lot of research with potential to be converted into spin-offs, there are very few university-led spin-offs across the country. To address this concern, Dr. Patil said that access to the right technological ecosystem is critical. “Learning from what IIT Madras Research Park has done, we are also replicating an SRM Technology and Research Park which will be up and running by the end of 2027,” he added.

One of the university’s priorities is women-led initiatives in entrepreneurship. “About six of our start-ups in BioNEST are women-led, which is a start,” he said.