India’s Tata to invest $5 mln in Tel Aviv University

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India’s largest conglomerate, Tata Industries,
announced its first major investment in Israel
Monday in a fund run by Tel Aviv University’s
(TAU) technology transfer company Ramot.
Tata has committed $5 million of the $20m.
planned for Ramot’s Technology Innovation
Momentum fund, which will invest in
commercializable university research. TAU
says its the first such investment worldwide.
“I’m not aware of any other academic
institution that has received an investment
from a conglomerate - not a donation, but an
investment,” says Giora Yaron, chairman of
Ramot’s board. “Their experts will be working
with our scientists to guide the science to
develop innovative products.”
The investment serves a dual purpose for
Tata. On the one hand, it will give the
company the option to commercialize
breakthroughs developed through the fund at
TAU, turning the university into a sort of R&D
project incubator for the company. But
perhaps more importantly, Tata is looking to
the University as a microcosm of Israeli
research and innovation in general.
“This is our attempt to scout out the horizon
and engage more deeply and broadly with
Israel,” says K. R. S. Jamwal, Executive
Director of Tata Industries, which had annual
revenues of over $100 billion in 2012, over
half of them from international operations
and subsidiaries such as the UK’s Jaguar
Land Rover. “Rather than just scouting
around and having conversations, it allows us
to show our commitment and show that
we’re keenly interested to do more,” he says.
“We’ve found this structure to be very
innovative, and at the moment we have not
seen any other university offering such a an
interesting structure,” says Jamwal.
Tata says it was drawn to the University’s
interdisciplinary capabilities and track record
of developing marketable technologies, such
as data storage algorithms used in SanDisk
flash memory drives and the pharmacological
breakthroughs used in Blistex’s Dentyl
mouthwash.
From Ramot’s perspective, the partnership is
an opportunity to add to the NIS 70m. it
brings in each year, which can can be
reinvested in the University.
“The potential is in the hundreds of millions
of dollars,” says Ramot CEO Shlomo Nimrodi,
who believes the fund can bridge the distance
between academic work in the ivory tower
and marketable innovation. For every dollar
earned on royalties, 20 cents will be
reinvested in the research labs and 40 cents
will go to the scientists themselves, providing
an inviting incentive for the academics.
“The problem in most academic institutions
is getting the innovation from step 1 to step
10,” he says. “The fact that we have Tata in
the mix increases the likelihood that two
things will happen: one, we will develop the
things that the market needs and, two, that
there’s an exit partner out there.”
Not only that, he says, but the fact that the
research is happening within a university
setting means that, unlike in many corporate
R&D labs, projects with longer time horizons
will have a space to develop.
That fits into Tata’s overall strategy of
investing in research and innovation as their
main source of growth in the coming years.
“The Tata group is looking to leverage
innovation and research and development as
a key area of focus and a source of
competitive advantage going forward,” says
Jamwal.
Looking to the future, Yaron thinks that the
cooperation between academia in business
can encourage the entire area’s business
development. “Tel Aviv University can do for
Tel Aviv what Stanford did for Silicon Valley,”
he says. “If we do it right, we will end up
driving a revolution that will change the
standard of living in Israel.

www.jpost.com/Business/Business-News/Indias-Tata-makes-1st-big-Israeli-investment-in-TAU-311451