Infusing the spirit of Innovation

How can you mainstream innovation and outof the box thinking? Bring in young minds, serve them up with challenges, and give them free rein to find innovative solutions. Get youth from across the nation, not merely from elite institutions. This was the thought behind the Smart India Hackathon. The brain behind this revolutionary concept is Dr Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer at the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Govt. of India. In an insightful interview to Corporate Citizen, he spells out the reasoning behind the process, and why it is critical to unleash the potential of research and innovation among India’s youth

"We promote students to think out of the box. Think wild. That wild thinking is somewhat missing now, which is actually hampering our innovation quotient in the long run where people are not able to ask the right question or solve the right problem"

Dr Jere interacting with students at a hackathon

Dr Abhay Jere is the Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) at the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), Govt. of India. During his one and a half-decade stint in the corporate world he has been Vice President, Life Science Domain since 2010 (he still holds this post, and is now on deputation to the MHRD).

Dr Jere earned his PhD from Savitribai Phule Pune University in Health Sciences and worked on Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and is an MSc Tech from the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai in Bioprocess Technology. Dr Jere is in the limelight for the Smart India Hackathon 2019 which is the World’s biggest ‘Open Innovation’ Initiative of the HRD ministry and was conceptualised to harness the creativity and energy of bright young students for the development of our nation. Dr Jere sees great potential in injecting the spirit of innovation and research amongst young minds, across two and three tier educational institutions as well, not confining them to premier institutes like the IITs alone. Read on…

Corporate Citizen: You have worked as a scientist in different corporate companies. How did you get into the corporate world that has very little scope for scientists in India?

Dr Abhay Jere : It’s a very interesting question. It happened by chance. I was working in Bengaluru as an R&D Scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific India Pvt. Ltd. A multinational company, it is a world leader in biotechnology, with more than 50 per cent partnerships in the global biotechnology market. In 2010, I happened to meet Dr Anand Desphande, Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Persistent Systems, on a Bengaluru- Pune flight. We got talking and the next day he called me to his office and said, “I want you to join Persistent Systems. Can you consider that?” I was not prepared to immediately say yes, but over a period of one month, we had a few discussions. Deshpande offered that I lead Persistent’s R&D Department, which he said he was trying to conceptualise, which was called Persistent Labs.

It was exciting and challenging for me, as my basic training was in R&D and here I would be working in the area of personalised medicine and genomics. So, I finally agreed and became the head of Persistent Labs.

Simultaneously, I was working on various other initiatives on innovation since 2011. In Pune, Dr Anand Desphande supported me in each and every way. Being a scientist by heart, as he was a PhD from the USA and graduated from IIT Kharagpur, he never asked me to get business for the company, but encouraged me to publish research papers. He asked me to explore as to how we could position ourselves as a company in the area of personalised medicine and bioinformatics.

CC: So were there projects that got monetised later?

We looked at long term grants and long-term collaborations, more than monetisation. We positioned ourselves as leaders in Bioinformatics. Big Data was a big thing those days and Mr Deshpande’s thought leadership made a good differentiation. We received generous grants for our various research work and entered into long-term collaboration with leading research institutions like IISER, Pune, The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), National AIDS Research Institute (NARI) and National Institute of Virology (NIV). We had engagements with NIV during the SARS epidemic. We digitalised their entire sample management system when the turnover was very high. We got a lot of government grants from CSIR or Dept. of Biotechnology (DBT). Then we jointly published research papers. It was more of thought leadership than anything else. Now we are also working on Tele Medicine projects using AI/ML approaches which will have huge application in the immediate future.

CC: Is Persistent Labs playing any role in the COVID crisis?

We started working with NIV during the outbreak of H1N1, as a CSR activity. Its entire system of sample management and sample handling has been digitised by us and they are currently also using it. It is imperative to have the right kind of lab management system, considering a large number of samples. This work has come in handy during SARS and COVID-19 too.

Secondly, we are working on developing telemedicine solution iDoctor, which is funded by the Dept. of Biotechnology (DBT). But because of the social distancing norms, the solution has still not got into trial although some initial testing has been completed.

"We are working on developing telemedicine solution iDoctor, which is funded by the Dept. of Biotechnology. But because of the social distancing norms, the solution has still not got into trial"

CC: How did you get the opportunity to become Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) of the MHRD?

I was doing innovation initiatives since 2012. During 2012-2013, I steered an Inclusive Innovation event along with Sakal, the leading Marathi newspaper, in Pune. We had a footfall of about 1.5 lakh visitors and the queue to the venue was at least 1.5 km long. The event organised for students and youngsters brought to light 143 innovators from across India. After that, Manohar Parrikar, the then Goa Chief Minister, took a keen interest in this novel project and in 2015, we conducted idea and innovation competition for the state of Goa. Although Mr Parrikar soon became the Defence Minister at the centre, the subsequent CM, Lakshaman Parsekar, actually helped us execute it.

The idea was to promote students to think out of the box and go wild with their ideas, as routine academics otherwise hampers the zest for innovation. We promoted students to think out of the box. Think wild. That wild thinking is somewhat missing now, which is actually hampering our innovation quotient in the long run where people are not able to ask the right question or solve the right problem. And many people get into the me too kind of a thing.

Six months down the line, I tried to have a similar event in Maharashtra. But it did not work because I did not get political support. I think the timing was bad. Then I gave up.

CC: Tell us about your formal appointment in MHRD as Chief Innovation Officer (CIO).

I was working informally with the ministry. Soon, they felt that because our Hackathon movement was getting a lot of traction, we need to create a cell to systematically foster this culture of innovation within our educational institutions. So they created this Innovation cell and I was selected to head it. I went through the entire process of interviews which included advertisements for the post and a proper selection process. As I had done so many initiatives, my selection wasn’t an issue. But since, I was officially working with Persistent, the then Secretary, MHRD, Dr Anand Desphande and Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe had a meeting requesting Persistent to loan me for maybe at least three years to start with so that this Innovation cell is stabilised. Mr Deshpande accepted this request. Now I’m deputed to the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) at the level of Additional Secretary. So, I’m more of lateral entry, on a contractual position, Therefore, at present, I am on a sabbatical with Persistent.

CC: Your Pune Digital Hackathon was a big hit. Could you elaborate?

In 2015-2016, the central government launched the Smart City proposal. At that time, the then PMC commissioner, Kunal Kumar and we got talking and we brainstormed as to whether we could come up with an innovative initiative for citizen engagement. This led to the conceptualisation of the Digital Pune Hackathon. Pune became the first city to organise a Hackathon for civic issues. We included the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd (PMPML), Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (PMRDA) and Pune Police. We asked each one of them to provide five problems which they would like the participants to tackle, through innovation.

We then bounced off these questions to the college students. At that time, the students weren’t aware of a Hackathon. I went to 30 colleges and personally spoke to each of them. We got a phenomenal response and at the end of it, more than 70 colleges participated. That became a huge hit. So we felt that we should explore something like this at Maharashtra or the Pan-India level. At that time Dr Anil Sahasrabudhe was the head of the College of Engineering Pune (COEP), and soon became the Chairman of AICTE.

"In a lifetime of 70-80 years, this six month or one year period may not be that big. There’s no reason to get depressed. You should see how you can use this time to enhance your skills"

CC: How did you take it forward?

I went to meet the then HRD Minister, Prakash Javadekar along with Dr Anil Shasrabudhe and Dr Vinay Sahasrabuddhe at his house. He had not heard of anything like a Hackathon so I explained the concept to him. He found it very interesting. Then I worked along with AICTE and conceptualised the whole initiative. Persistent Systems too backed it and officially collaborated. I led the entire initiative. And for the first time, we all came together to solve the problem which actually needed to be solved. AICTE has more than 10,000 educational institutions of higher education with a whopping 80 lakh students under its banner. As every student has to work for six months on a project as an internship, the amount of energy spent is equivalent to 5-10 lakh person-years per year, which is the time required for human evolution.

CC: That was a colossal number. So, what was the outcome?

In the majority of the cases, the efforts become futile as there is a lot of copy-pasting and reinventing of the wheel. Students do not take their projects seriously.

We are in a peculiar state where we have millions of problems on one side and millions of youngsters on the other side. And these problems don’t even require rocket science kind of solutions; they require easy solutions.

We thought we could bring solution providers on one platform. For that, I visited several ministries. I was still with Persistent Systems at that point in time. I took the help of MHRD’s additional secretary, Mr Subramanyam who was very supportive. He wrote personally to many ministries. And after a lot of chasing, we got about 26 ministries/departments on board. They included the Ministry of Railways, Ministry of External Affairs, ISRO, Department of Atomic Energy, Department of Road Transport, Department of Rural and Urban Development, and so on. Each one of them provided us between 5 to 20 problem statements. Altogether, we got about 598 problem statements. The objective was to challenge students to solve problems which were important for the various ministries and departments, pertaining to streamlining project management, project monitoring and administration. ISRO, in particular, gave amazing statements, which otherwise the students would have never thought about or got an opportunity. About 40,000 to 50,000 students participated in the first edition. It became the world’s biggest Hackathon in a sense because of the large participation. Then we approached Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who was aware of the Hackathon concept because he had inaugurated one in the USA, for India. He understood its potential and said that he will address the students.

This Smart India Hackathon lasted for 36 hours. By 9 pm, PM Modi joined and addressed the students. For the final rounds, we had about 10,000 students who were working non-stop for 36 hours across 26 cities of India.

Because the PM addressed, we got a lot of media attraction. So, the next year, in 2018, apart from Central Ministries, we got 17 state governments to participate. In 2019, we had the central government, some States and about 90 plus industries joining us. These included major companies like Hindustan Lever, ITC, Maruti Suzuki, TVS Group, the Adani Group amongst others. We had about 2 to 2.5 lakh students comprising of 54,000 team entries. This actually kick-started the Hackathon culture in India. Now you see Hackathons happening in gallis and mohallas too. Before that, only elite organisations like IBM, TCS and Persistent used to hold internal Hackathons to motivate their employees. But now, the Hackathon culture is democratised and to give you an example, even Kolhapur Municipal Corporation plans to hold such an event.

"In the majority of the cases, the efforts become futile as there is a lot of copypasting and reinventing of the wheel. Students do not take their projects seriously"

CC: What’s your plan of action for the coming years?

As we are doing multiple innovation initiatives, so nowadays I don’t even talk about Smart India Hackathon as it has reached its pinnacle and now I have many other initiatives to talk about. After taking over as Chief Innovation Officer, I had discussions with a large number of youngsters, directors, deans and vice chancellors and I realised that there are several lacunas where interventions are required. So we started working on a more comprehensive manner. We realised that we need to have the right policies and approach to promote innovation and entrepreneurship within our educational institutions. Many a time, vice chancellors and leaders are well-meaning people but they come from varied backgrounds like psychology, sociology or basic sciences. And when they are appointed as deans, vice chancellors or chancellors and are asked to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, they suddenly feel lost. They certainly value its importance but they don’t know how to go about it. So, we felt that we need to address this problem by hand-holding these leaders. We also realised that we needed to create a number of large national platforms like Smart India Hackathons as till then, opportunities were limited to only IIT and NIT students because they are considered to be elite but there are a large number of youngsters in tier-two and tier-three colleges who are equally bright and innovative, but there was no national recognition or platform for them. Creating competitions at the national level to showcase their talent was important. Moreover, we also realised that we need the right policy frameworks to incentivise faculty and students keen on pursuing innovation and entrepreneurship. And finally, how are we going to measure the outcome or impact of our interventions?

So to start, last year we came up with an important policy guiding framework. It’s called the ‘National Innovation and Startup Policy’ for Faculty and students. What we realised was that if some of the students or faculty wanted to pursue their own innovation or entrepreneurship or startup activities, there was no incentivisation. More importantly, in some of the very reputed institutes, the revenue sharing model was really terrible. For example, some institutes were asking 40-60% share of revenue which is generated by faculty. Then 30% would go in paying the income tax. Then what is left after that? It was not very encouraging or incentivizing for faculty. So, we thought, we needed to change that.

Then came the question of who is the owner of the Intellectual Property (IP). Educational institutes had the policy that anything that is developed in their institution, the IP belonged to them. We came to know about the story of a student who developed his own venture, in the hostel. Eventually, the institution started claiming that the IP belongs to it as it was created in their hostel, using their facilities. So, some of these things had to be fixed. How much equity can the Institute ask for? Some of them used to arm-twist these kids asking for unfair equity, without actually giving them support. We actually fixed that also. Now, we have this guiding framework which is approved by the AICTE and UGC. Every institute now has to adopt it because Universities are mostly autonomous. Thanks to this framework, there is a lot of pressure from the faculty and students on the institute to follow the recommendations and not violate them.

Then, when it came to intervention or hand-holding, we started a very innovative programme called IIC Institution’s Innovative Council. We established councils in about 1500 institutions; in the first year, we established them in 900 institutions. We are hand holding them on a monthly basis by guiding them as to what they should do in each month, to ensure the innovation ecosystem is established and stabilised in these institutions. We believe that if they follow what we say, then certainly it will get stabilised. We are giving them credit points for every event which they do based on our guidance. Once they accumulate some credit points, they can convert it into stars. So, they acquire 2 or 3 star IIC which is recognised by MHRD. It has become a brand value for them. And they use that for advertising their institutes to get better faculty and students.

Because of these interventions, more than 20,000 innovation initiatives have been conducted till date where 26 lakh students and faculty together participated. Of course, a student is sometimes part of two or three events. Now colleges have even started including innovation as one of the themes in competitions like painting, music and poetry.

Now we have launched a ‘Drug Discovery Hackathon’ for COVID-19. I am the national convener for this initiative and currently working very closely with a Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) to Govt. of India. We have already released 29 problem statements. It’s a first of its kind Grand Challenge initiative in Drug Discovery space in India and is actively supported by Prof. Shekhar Mande, Director General CSIR and Prof. Anil Saharabudhe, Chairman, AICTE.

This Drug Discovery Hackathon is open to chemists, biologists, computer science professionals and pharmacists. Because you have a large amount of machine learning, Deep learning, Neural Network approaches coming in drug discovery…that’s where computer scientists can play a big role. Chemists and pharmacists do conventional discovery as they have a good understanding of targets and proteins, viral structure and mechanism of action which is very critical. And biologists play a great role as well due to good knowledge of aetiology and physiology. Through this Hackathon, we are trying to target the culture of collaborative-competitive drug discovery in our country. Also, a large number of people will get sensitised towards drug discovery field. This is an innovative model that we are trying.

"We are aiming for a five trillion dollar economy. If you really want to achieve that aim, India has to evolve as knowledge based society and a knowledge based economy"

CC: Such things bring researcher and industry together, right?

Yes, there is no other innovation initiative other than Smart India Hackathon where so many ministries, government departments, faculties, industries, institutions, professionals and a few lakh students come together for a single cause. Even for the current Drug Discovery Hackathon, a large numbers of multinational companies working in drug discovery space are joining us and are ready to train students and faculty and even collaborate with them to expedite drug discovery process against Covid-19.

CC: Apart from Hackathons, IITs and Innovation Policies, are you working on any other initiatives?

Yes. Multiple. To promote the culture of innovation in our education institutions, since the last year, we have started the ARIIA (Atal Ranking on Institutions on Innovation Achievements) to rank all major educational institutions on their innovation index or quotient, like the number of startups, the number of faculties involved in innovation, how much revenue was generated, how many patents were commercialised and so on. Last year, the President of India gave away the rankings. Even this year, we would be inviting the President to announce the ranking.

We are trying to reach high. We are coming up with a DTH channel focused on innovation and entrepreneurship. This channel will showcase success stories, various innovation done by innovators, students, grassroots innovators and so on. Mr Surya Prakash, Ex-Chairman, Prasar Bharti and Mr Shashi Shekhar Vempati, CEO, Prasar Bharti, are advising us, on this channel.

CC: You changed the outlook of the student fraternity from job creators to job seekers. What’s your advice for the students...

We are aiming for a five trillion dollar economy (due to COVID-19 crisis there is going to be some short-term contraction but it is a very good aim to have). If you really want to achieve that aim, India has to evolve as knowledge- based society and a knowledge-based economy. That’s extremely critical. So, what we need to do is generate ideas which not only have relevance in India but across the globe. For that to happen, we need to evolve as the generation of problem solvers; but currently, problem-solving capabilities amongst our youngsters is not that great as our students are chasing marks or grades or jobs. We need to create more job creators, not job seekers. And that’s a completely different mindset. If we have to do that, we really need generations of entrepreneurs and innovators. That’s where I would like to focus on. I would like to request youngsters to evolve as problem solvers. They should be a part of the solution rather than be a part of the problem.

CC: Please tell us about your leadership interviews on Twitter.

During COVID-19 crisis, we’ve been getting messages from anxious youngsters who were also bit depressed about where the world is moving, about their job, about the future. I just wanted to spread positivity and give them hope that everything is not lost. In a lifetime of 70-80 years, this six month or one-year period may not be that big. There’s no reason to get depressed. You should see how you can use this time to enhance your skills and prepare yourself for the next round of opportunities in a better way. So that was the thought process for taking interviews which would inspire youngsters. Moreover, the majority of the guests were at home and relatively free, so it was easy for me to get their appointments and record these talks. Also, many leaders believed that we need to motivate youngsters during this period of crisis.

CC: How many hours of work do you put in daily?

I try to work for more than 14-15 hours. Usually, I work till 1 am and I’m up and working again by 7 am, the next day. Frankly, my seniors work more than me. For example, my boss in one sense, Dr Anil Sahasrabudhe works more than the hours that I put in. I still need to catch up with him and I try my best.

CC: Your philosophy of life…

I genuinely believe that when I’ll be on my death bed, I want to give myself some positive answers. That, yes, I have given more than what I’ve taken from society. That is what I’ll strive for. That, I don’t need to answer anyone; I need to be answerable to myself and I don’t want any regrets.