A racing car that can go from zero to 100km per hour in under four seconds, an unmanned flying taxi ride that could cost just about 2.5 times the average cab fare does, technology to build a hospital with 2,000 beds in just weeks... these are only some of the inventions to emerge out of the Centre for Innovation (CFI), a student-led lab established in 2008 at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), India’s premier engineering institute in the heart of Chennai. 

The lab has 1,000 members and hosts 70 projects. These include electric-powered formula race cars, intelligent ground vehicles, sounding rockets with reusable components, electrical weaving machines for indigenous weaver communities, sustainable farming equipment, and inclusive disability gadgets. CFI clubs are autonomous. There are no grades, and no perks for members. “The opportunity to do and gather learnings along the way is their greatest reward,” says Prabhu Rajagopal, faculty in charge of CFI.

“Engineering is taking a reboot. It is now transformed by sustainability,” says Prabhu Rajagopal, faculty-in-charge of CFI. An innovation journey really starts when it’s fun to do. Indians study theory and crunch numbers far more than engineering students elsewhere.

A ticket into the CFI club culture is a badge of honour students’ proudly wear. “I joined IIT for Raftar,” says 21-year old Yavkreet Swami, a final year civil engineering student. Raftar Formula Racing was formed with about 50 students passionate about motorsports and automotive engineering, in 2012. The team presented its first electric car RFR23 in Formula Bharat 2023, a student competition for Indian formula race cars in Coimbatore. They finished third overall in the electric category, and won the first and second positions for their business plan presentation and engineering design, respectively. The car is fuel efficient and light due to Raftar’s extensive use of composite materials, and it can clock zero to 100km per hour in just under 4 seconds. Now, the Raftar team is busy running carbon tests to further lighten the vehicle and hope to give it more speed while making it durable and sustainable.

Swami, who has been a member for four years, most enjoyed throwing himself outside his comfort zone. “You have a lot of freedom here. I was exposed to mechanical, electrical, power trains, thermals, and aerodynamics through Raftar, because of which I opted for courses from other streams such as ocean engineering. Eventually, this allowed me to change my major. Next year, when I do a PhD, it will be in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and I have Raftar to thank for it,” he says.

Rajagopal pins down the tenets of innovation to a few crucial elements. Foremost are the joys of discovery. An innovation journey, he says, really starts when it’s fun to do. Indians study theory and crunch numbers far more than engineering students elsewhere who simply build things and learn by doing. CFI likes to mix it up, he says, by interweaving theory with practice and blurring interdisciplinary boundaries. “As long as you define yourself strictly as a mathematician, a chemist, a physicist or a mechanical engineer, innovation and product creation are tough to come by,” he says. 

The CFI administration funds students’ explorations, experiments, and competition entries, without any pressure of winning. The room to fail is perhaps CFI’s biggest impetus to fostering a culture of innovation, Rajagopal points out. “The best part is that we get to make a difference in society while working with the best tech in the country,” says Ahana Hegde, a BTech mechanical engineering student who is part of CFI’s Project Abhiyaan, which is building technology for autonomous vehicles to minimize road accidents. She and her team recently topped the design and cyber security challenge at the 30th Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition, a prestigious, students’ annual international robotics competition, at Oakland University, Michigan. The team now wants to roll out the first such vehicle as a campus shuttle service.

Students with entrepreneurial zeal during their CFI stint can enroll in Nirmaan, the institute’s pre-incubator, which tests and prepares their innovations for market viability and introduces them to entrepreneurship.

Just outside the gates of the campus is the IIT Madras Incubation Cell (IITMIC), a deep-tech start-up hub registered as a not-for-profit company. IITMIC has incubated 332 successful start-ups, with more than an 80 percent success rate, crossing a total valuation of $4.6 billion. One of its enterprises, Uniphore, now one of the world’s largest AI-native companies, has become a so-called unicorn, a private company with a valuation more than $1 billion.

Uniphore has been valued at $2.5 billion, according to a report in Mint, in 2022. This stimulating environment led Swostik Saurav Dash and his batchmates, who were looking for ways to create impact in the disability space, to work on a wheelchair with a motorized clip-on. “The point was to enable mobility for wheelchair users so that they are able to live and earn with dignity,” he says. Their company NeoMotion now has 4,000 users and has been valued at ₹100 crore ($12 million approximately). 

Last year, they launched Livelihood on Wheels, an initiative in collaboration with Zomato, to provide work opportunities to people with disabilities. It enabled 200 wheelchair users across the southern states to work as food delivery agents. The sparkle of pride in their eyes as they set out to work each day, Dash says, is perhaps his greatest reward. 

In October last year, while launching the School of Sustainability, the director of IITM, Veezhinathan Kamakoti, declared, “Engineering will soon be centred around the sustainable development goals.” Its campus, where students pushing the frontiers of scientific research and innovation share the campus with wildlife, most famously spotted deer, feels symbolic of the institute’s resolute green focus: finding new and innovative solutions to climate change and environmental threats. 

Discover more in the third edition of UNDP India's flagship magazine Inspiring India.