Wadhwani And Gates Foundations Launch Initiative To Commercialize Indian Lab Innovations

India-West News Desk

NEW DELHI – India-founded Wadhwani Foundation and the U.S.-based Gates Foundation have signed a partnership to expand translational research and innovation across India through the National Innovation Network, an initiative aimed at helping academic research move from laboratories to market-ready solutions.

Under the agreement, the Gates Foundation will support five National Innovation Network Centers of Excellence over the next five years, beginning with two centers this year. The initiative will focus on sectors including health, nutrition, biotechnology, genomics and medtech.

Archna Vyas, director of the India Country Office at the Gates Foundation, said in an official statement that the initiative would help Indian researchers convert scientific breakthroughs into scalable solutions.

“Some of the most consequential health and nutrition innovations of the next decade will originate in Indian institutions,” Vyas said. “Our collaboration with Wadhwani Foundation will help support the opportunity and possibility for these innovations by investing in translational pathways that can enable India’s research talent to move ideas from discovery to deployment.”

The National Innovation Network, or NIN, is a national-scale expansion of the Wadhwani Innovation Network. The centers supported under the initiative will help researchers move projects beyond early-stage laboratory work through prototype development, pilot deployment, intellectual property support, commercialization and startup creation.

Dr. Ajay Kela, CEO and board member of the Wadhwani Foundation, noted that the initiative aims to broaden innovation access across India.

“WIN has demonstrated that India’s innovation potential can be unlocked when researchers, institutions, industry, and capital come together with a shared mission,” Kela said. “Through NIN, we now have the opportunity to democratize innovation across India and help position the country as a global leader in innovation.”

The Wadhwani Innovation Network currently supports projects in areas including health tech, biotechnology and quantum technologies through collaborations with institutions such as IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, the Indian Institute of Science and C-CAMP.

The initiative aims to strengthen links between academia, industry, investors and philanthropic organizations to accelerate innovation, entrepreneurship and research commercialization in sectors aligned with India’s development priorities.