On the occasion of World Intellectual Property Day, there was an event at the Constitution Club of India on Powering Change: Women in Innovation and Creativity. During the event, there was a panel discussion on ‘Supporting IPR Schemes and the Way Forward’.
“I am inspired by the ladies in my life. Any business today needs money and market, but you also need the idea and skill to implement it. We would like to ask panellists how they perceive the start-up community“, said Vedant Pujari, CEO, Accures Legal, who served as the moderator of the session.
Rahul Verma, Head Content Operation, Clarivate Analytics said, “I was working with the Malaysian patent office for a while, and I was trying to see how their economy can become an innovation-driven economy. In 5 years they made a huge turn-around, in terms of drafting a national IP policy. Government drafted policies how IP can be used as a valuable asset for commercialization and for giving loans. We wondered how to assign the right price tag to IP. We trained examiners at the Malaysian patent office on IP valuation. They invited consultants from Australia, UK, and US. The first batch of IP valuation examiners were trained. We saw over 5 years that there were huge programs and workshops to train them. IP was used as a collateral to extend loans. Between 2010 and 2015 there was an annual increase of 5-6% in patent filing. It takes a vision, a new idea and a concerted effort from government offices to revitalize the patent and IP environment of India, as patent filing has decreased over the years.”
“It is important to connect mentors to the right people in the ecosystem. Start-up India is a government program aimed at promoting entrepreneurship and helping them. The National Action Agenda mandated us to create an online platform, which is the Start-up India online hub. We believe it is the power of a team which can help build great enterprises. Right from learning and development resources that an idea stage start-up might require, to access to developers and mentors, everything is there. You will be given access to mentors and investors in the area you are in. You will be given information about incubation centres and any other information you require", said Nayani Nasa of Start-up India.
Dr RK Panigrahi, Ex Director, MSME, DI, Delhi, said, “If you do your business today, the way you were doing it yesterday, you are sure to perish from the market tomorrow. Changes are required. Fortunately or unfortunately, a year back, the government formed a committee of 12 joint secretaries to see what other ministries and MSME is doing. We found out that what MSME is doing is also replicating other ministries. Government forms the policies, sitting in the cabinet secretariat I could see different ministries do different activities. It was also populating down to innovation, entrepreneurship and incubation. Sometimes government policies don’t take off. The changes they made, we could see. Whoever creates one policy, it is not workable till you bring up the problems. Another ministry called Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, and there is an MSME ministry. So both are doing the same thing. There are guidelines though which are distinct. What we need is good mentors. We need to seek mentors where people can be given right information at the right time”. He also added, “If you have a mentor as a research scholar, you must note that failure mentors are better than successful mentors.”