Guess what? IIT-Madras is allowing professors to take sabbaticals to focus on their startups

At IIT-Madras, sabbatical from academics no more just means taking a one-year time off to go to another university or a research organisation.

When Professor Balaji Srinivasan, faculty at IIT-Madras as well as co-founder and director of Chennai-based startup Unilumen Photonics, attended a tradeshow in 2014, he found new markets opening up.

The new found demand for the technology he was developing was so high that Srinivasan felt the need to accelerate work and push things forward.

Initially he tried to take some hours off every day from teaching and focus on his startup, only to find it was not making much progress.

"My day would be really torn between different things such as coming to class, teaching students, attending meetings, doing research and meeting my students, and in between I would have to find time to go to the company to take care of some emergencies there," he recollects.

Finally to sort out things he went for a sabbatical at the end of which he was successfully able to make a couple of products work.

IIT Madras, the premier engineering institute which has a thriving startup ecosystem has enabled its faculty members, through policy level changes, to take up sabbatical also to focus on their individual startups.

"Typically, an academical sabbatical means a faculty would either go to another university or a research organisation or even an industry in some cases and they will spend time there up to a year or so," noted Prof Krishnan Balasubramanian, Dean of IC&SR department, IIT-M.

"What we are offering is also an opportunity to do more. If you are involved in a startup from the beginning and want to focus more on it, then sabbatical is a way to do it."

According to him the need to avail a sabbatical could be sector-specific as well as company-specific.

"If you are in a startup sector which needs very high rate of growth or if you are in a company that needs your time very significantly then your participation has to be wholesome and you may want to take time-off and spend time there," he said.

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