CHENNAI: Indian Institute of Technology - Madras (IIT-Madras) generated more than Rs 1,000 crore revenue and funding from projects and consultancy during 2021-22. This is the highest in a financial year for IIT-M.

This sum includes Rs 768 crore of funds from projects sanctioned by the Centre and the state government and Rs 313 crore in industry consultancy. Some of the major projects include education through information and communication technology using direct to home (DTH) (Rs 300 crore), centre for excellence for road safety (Rs 99.5 crore), speech technologies in Indian languages (Rs 50 crore) and collecting datasets and benchmarks for building Indian language technology (Rs 47 crore).

IIT-Madras director V Kamakoti said, "The performance of the Centre for Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research is very encouraging and perfectly aligned with the strategic plan of IIT-Madras. This is a reflection of our increased interaction with funding agencies and industry."

"The recent direct-to-home initiative has brought in a new dimension. The high-calibre faculty from the institute have been pushing the boundaries for the applications of their research, which brings in more and more industry funding," said Manu Santhanam, dean, Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research (ICSR), IIT-Madras.

IIT-Madras has emerged leader in industrial consultancy through the large value projects mostly from the computing and 5G sectors, which are expected to grow further. "The total funding typically shows a growth rate of around 5% to 8%, but the industry funding has seen a greater spurt in recent years. A key reason for the growth in industry-sponsored funding is the increased contribution in the form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for research This is expected to grow significantly in the future," he added.