This weekend I had a chance to attend a wonderful seminar hosted at IISC Bangalore , titled ' Nanotechnology - Is your Business Ready" . Out of the 4 speakers who enlightened the audience, Dr. Rudra Pratap was the best speaker amongst all, as he spoke on the technology, the challenges and the future ahead in a very candid manner.

This is what I learnt from the seminar :

What is Nanotechnology ? Nanotechnology is any technology which exploits phenomena and structures that can only occur at the nanometer scale, which is the scale of single atoms and small molecules.
Why is it important NOW? Top down approach to manufacturing has been for years and has started reaching a stage where further miniaturization will not be possible. The most popular example that comes to one’s mind is the CHIP where the number of transistors have been increasing at a tremendous pace and will hit a saturation point very soon.

Is it similar to the IT Revolution? Many experts claim that Nano is the next industrial revolution in the offing.The fundamental difference between nanotechnology and older technologies is the approach. Nano is a bottoms up approach where you take atom by atom and subsequently build stuff. Like the IT Rev which was actually started with the semiconductor research in 1969 and is still continuing till date, Nano is in the initial stages where the businesses and commercial applications are expected to take off in 2025.

What should India do to Ride the wave , this time around ?
The biggest bottleneck in India is that most of the research that is taking place in nano , has NO Government / Private Initiative. Yes, Indian Govt has put in money , but according to Prof Rudra Pratap, it is 10 years late . This is the time when private equity funding should come in. Infact , if one looks at the Nano funding that is going on in US, most are private equity firms. Govt Funding was started in 1989 and the proportion of funding has come down considerably ? Does that mean India has missed the bus ?

One of the highlights of the seminar was the model presented by Dr. Pratap on how must academia and corporate world work on creating and using nano for solving some specific Indian Problems. He said that academia should move out of citation driven life to more lead driven  approach and go out of the way to encourage, excite the corporate entities for a) Infrastructure b) Risk capital c) Marketing efforts and buzz generation.The model suggested 4 to 5 lead research centers, 20 satellite centers, 50 feeder nodes and a trained manpower of 50,000 in 10 years. Ratio of expert to technician needed is 1:8.

Capital Requirements for the model to work :

  • Infrastructure -1000k USD - Private equity firm
  • Manpower - 100k UDS /yr - Private equity firm
  • Maintenance - 50kUSD/yr - Private equity firm
  • Real Estate - University
  • Manpower - 10 from Univ

Some of the India specific nano products that would be needed are relating to Pharma sector, food packaging, sensors in auto ancillary parts, and nanoelectronics.

Among a host of interesting questions from the audience , one of them was - “Professor, What should a student do in order to be prepared for this nano tsunami?, for which the reply came that , " It is all a matter of mindset. Nano involves exploiting material characteristics at a scale which we are not used to in normal life . Hence it is utmost important to start observing the nano world using an electron microscope, start appreciating the immense energy and activity that takes place in this world, and then start working to use it to our advantage”

In this regard, one of the speakers was mentioning the rather distressing situation of most of the engineering colleges in India not having an electron microscope.

My biggest takeaway from the seminar was that, it is very important to get the timing right for any country to have leadership position in the technology , and in the case of nanotech, India is 10 years late than other countries…It is very important for the nation as a whole to catch up and ride the way, or else, we will be forever stamped as a service nation!