Tamil Nadu on Thursday, July 17, unveiled a state-backed initiative aimed at accelerating the commercialisation of deep tech research, as the southern state positions itself as a national leader in advanced technologies such as AI, semiconductors and clean energy, according to a report by The New Indian Express.
The Tamil Nadu Technology Transfer Facilitation Centre (TNTTFC), housed within the state’s flagship innovation hub at Anna University, was formally inaugurated by Minister for Information Technology and Digital Services, Dr Palanivel Thiaga Rajan. The facility will serve as a central platform to connect academic research and intellectual property (IP) assets with industry, startups and investors.
According to a Government Order accessed by The New Indian Express, the cost of the centre is estimated to be Rs 3.45 crore under the Tamil Nadu Innovation Initiatives scheme for a period of three years. The centre is designed to tackle long-standing structural challenges that have hampered innovation-to-commercialisation pipeline. These include fragmented institutional linkages, regulatory bottlenecks and the absence of dedicated market-facing support for early-stage technologies.
“Tamil Nadu is home to some of the country’s strongest academic and research institutions, but the conversion of ideas into impact remains suboptimal,” Thiaga Rajan said. “This centre will help us change that by building a coherent, state-wide ecosystem for deep tech translation.”
The facility will provide end-to-end services for technology transfer — including IP management, licencing, and market analysis — while also offering targeted support for startups and MSMEs through seed funding, mentorship and training. A key programme, ‘Research to Revenue’ (R2R), will help researchers turn lab-scale innovations into viable commercial ventures, stated the report by The New Indian Express.
Dr J Jeyaranjan, Executive Vice-Chairman of the State Planning Commission, said the centre would play a catalytic role in transforming TN’s research output into global economic relevance.
Officials said TNTTFC would also facilitate spin-outs from academic institutions and create new avenues for joint R&D with industry including contract research and consulting. The move aligns with the state’s broader push to enhance the global competitiveness of its knowledge economy.
“TNTTFC will offer comprehensive support for the end-to-end IP Management; empower researchers and innovators to transform IP into successful ventures through dedicated spinoff support; and seed grant for proof-of-concept validation, prototype development, and early market testing,” said Brajendra Navnit, Principal Secretary, IT&DS.
Vanitha Venugopal, CEO of the iTNT Hub, added that the platform would prioritise IP-secured, market-ready innovations and serve as a launchpad for them globally. “By aligning academic capabilities with industry needs, we can engineer breakthrough partnerships and bring science closer to the citizen,” she said.
