From left: Dr. Rankin (AVP, R&I, Carleton University), Dr. Sahasrabudhe (Chairman, AICTE), Dr. Poonia (Vice-Chairman, AICTE)
November 2017
Innovation Connections
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A Canadian trade mission to India in November led by three key Canadian ministers, joined by a team from Carleton University, has given a major push to further enhance the bilateral relationship between India and Canada. The ministers, Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of International Trade, and Marc Garneau, Minister of Transport, held high-level discussions with their counterparts and officials and signed a number of agreements covering several fields. The delegation was described as the largest Canadian trade delegation to India. Carleton's team, led by Dr. Pauline Rankin, Associate Vice-President (Research and International), Harry Sharma, Manager, Canada -India Centre for Excellence (CICE) and Dr. Banu Ormeci, Jarislowsky Chair in Water and Global Health, leveraged the opportunity to sign several new agreements on research partnerships, technical education, teacher training and a business acceleration program for women-led technology startups. According to Dr. Rankin, the Canada-India Technology Summit in Delhi was an opportunity to showcase Carleton's technology and innovation programs and capabilities to an audience of senior Indian officials, business leaders and academic institutions. During the summit, Canadian delegates learned about India’s technology needs and the role Canadian institutions and companies could play to solve critical issues for Indians. Dr. Rankin said signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in the area of entrepreneurship was one of the key highlights of the trade mission for Carleton. Under the MoU, the AICTE Start-up Policy Unit and CICE will work closely in the area of knowledge sharing and start-up exchange. Carleton and AICTE will jointly design collaborative programs in the area of entrepreneurship for approximately 10,000 AICTE-approved technical institutes for higher education in India. For example, a business acceleration program was announced for women-led technology startups. Under the program, five women-led tech startups will visit Carleton in August 2018 for a scale-up business bootcamp.
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Delegation visit gives major push to bilateral relations
Quarterly updates on science, technology, trade and policy
India-Canada Bilateral Trade and the proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement By Dr. Mohan Prabhu, Author, “Import and Export Law in India-Canada Bilateral Trade: An Overview”
OP-ED
India and Canada have a long-standing bilateral trade relationship. Canada had accorded preferential tariff treatment, which began with the British Preferential Tariff (BPT), followed by the Least Developed Country (LDC) Tariff. The latter ceased to exist once the rapidly growing Indian economy brought India out of the LDC category. As a result of millennial foreign trade policies, India, like most other countries, now has the Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) status with Canada. Canada has not, however, lost sight of the fact that India has become a very dynamic economy along with other members of the BRICS group, with a burgeoning middle class having sizable disposable income and a strong appetite for new products. This middle class is eyed as an important market for Canadian goods, including agriculture and food products. Over eight years ago, Canada initiated free trade talks with India to capture that lucrative market. Currently, India is a strong importer of vegetables and a growing market for feed oil cakes, canola oil and grains. In 2016, two-way merchandise trade between Canada and India was worth more than $8 billion. India’s rapidly expanding economy offers tremendous opportunities for Canadian companies in emerging sectors such as transportation infrastructure, life-science, clean energy technology and renewable energy as well as in traditional sectors such as infrastructure development, natural resources, defence and security, While Canada has concluded several free trade agreements (FTAs) during 2017 with other jurisdictions and countries, such as the European Union, Ukraine and South Korea, talks with India on a comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA) have been going at a snail's pace for reasons not hard to comprehend. Canada wants India to first ink the bilateral foreign investment promotion and protection agreement (FIPA), with trade barriers and insistence on exhaustion of domestic dispute settlement before resorting to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. There is probably also concern about the application of Indian food safety standards to all imports, especially with respect to genetic modification, irradiation and growth hormones used for boosting yield from farm animals. Strict requirement to disclose use of these in packaging and labeling materials is also a concern. While Canada is wary of strict implementation by India of intellectual property rights, India, on the other hand, has concerns about Canada clamping down on imported goods from India. Furthermore, Canada, like India, has also trade barriers in the dairy products industry under its “supply management” policy that protects dairy farmers who are a strong and politically influential group. Progress on resolving the above referred issues has caused several delays in the conclusion of the CEPA. The negotiating teams of the two countries met as recently as August 2017 and agreed to hold another round of talks to resolve outstanding issues. Hopefully CEPA will become a reality in the near future. All the above issues are discussed by Dr. Mohan Prabhu in his soon-to-be published book, “Import and Export Law in India-Canada Bilateral Trade: An Overview”
Innovation Overview
In comparison to U.S., Canada needs additional R&D investment of roughly $1 billion
Surendra Gera, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Canada-India Centre for Excellence
Canada’s R&D performance: Are we missing the boat?
Click here to read the full report
KEY MESSAGES : Canada’s GERD intensity in 2015 ranked 16th among 18 OECD countries. Canada's BERD intensity ranks 17 out of 18 peer OECD countries. BERD expenditures as a share of GDP are roughly half the U.S. level and declining. The BERD intensity gap between Canada and the U.S. is largely driven by Canada’s low R&D intensity in the manufacturing sector. BERD intensity is lower in Canada than in the U.S. largely because of a smaller number of large-sized firms in Canada that also perform less R&D.
Innovation has been a key source of long-run economic growth and increased standard of living. It is through innovation that new products are created and existing products are produced more efficiently to take a larger share of the global market. Innovation is a result of several factors but R&D is the most important one. So R&D plays an important role in generating new ideas, technologies and efficient processes that contribute to overall innovation and productivity gains in the economy. Both private markets and government have a role to play in R&D investments. Private markets invest with the expectation that they will be able to recover the cost and generate profits with innovation. The government, besides conducting basic research, has an interest to provide R&D subsidies to the private sector. This is in a way correction of market failure. Firms expecting that part of their return will be absorbed by some other, so they invest sub-optimally (less than socially optimal). Knowing this, government provides subsidies so that innovation takes place and investing firms get all the return they generate and society gets back the subsidy in the form of spillovers. In that context, this paper evaluates the R&D performance of both the private and the government sectors. This paper outlines Canada’s overall R&D performance, its relative position with the other OECD countries, especially our next door neighbor, the U.S. We also provide some diagnostics of “why we are where we are now." As in major OECD countries, the three main R&D performing sectors in Canada are: 1) the business community, (BERD); 2) the higher education sector (HERD); and 3) the government of Canada, or intramural R&D (GOVERD). In addition to doing research, the government plays an even more important role encouraging others to undertake R&D through funding support. The sum of all three R&D expenditures is termed as Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD). GERD intensity – spending as a percentage of gross domestic product - is considered an important measure of a country’s investment in innovation.
www.carleton.ca/india/
Carleton University's experimental physicist Dr. Mark Boulay has been awarded $3.35 million to build a lab to help gain insight into the nature of neutrinos and dark matter. The support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) is to find elusive answers to the questions that could lead to a better understanding of the origin of the universe. The funding will help him to build a lab equipped with detectors to assist in the search for dark matter particles. Neutrinos are much smaller than other known particles and they are very difficult to detect. Dark matter is even more mysterious. It has never been observed, but scientists have known for a long time that it is out there because its gravitational effects can be seen as galaxies move faster than expected. Dark matter outweighs conventional matter by a five to one ratio, said Boulay, who is a Canada Research Chair in Particle Astrophysics. Essentially, most of the matter in the universe is invisible. Dark matter research is one of the highest profile areas of particle physics - and it is highly competitive. The detectors being developed for the Carleton lab will support the study of neutrinos and dark matter at SNOLAB, an underground laboratory in a mine two kilometres under the surface near Sudbury, Ontario. The lab will be used by researchers at Carleton and others in its network, which includes TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, as well as scientists at the University of British Columbia, McGill University and Universite de Sherbrooke. Boulay estimates that it will take a year to construct the first set of prototype detectors for the lab at Carleton.
Neutrino and dark matter lab to be built at Carleton
News Corner
Space firm shifts to U.S Canada’s iconic and largest space firm, which created the Canadarm and a spacecraft like Radarsat-2, is becoming a U.S. company soon. Through a merger and acquisition of another company, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) has now become Maxar Technologies, and will become a fully incorporated U.S. company by 2019. According to the American who leads the new company, Canada will still retain control of the Radarsat-2 surveillance satellite.
India to double its internet user base by 2021 According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Complete Forecast, internet users in India are expected to double to 829 million users by 2021 from 373 million users in 2016, driven by digital transformation. In other words, approximately 59 per cent of the Indian population will use the internet by 2021.The report further said that there would be two billion networked devices in 2021, up from 1.4 billion in 2016, and overall IP traffic is expected to grow four-fold during the same period of five years at a compounded annual growth rate of 30 per cent. Video is expected to continue to dominate IP traffic and overall internet traffic growth, representing 76 per cent of all internet traffic in 2021, up from 57 percent in 2016, the report noted. India will reach 84 billion internet video minutes per month by 2021, which is 160,000 years of video per month, or about 32,000 video minutes every second, the report explained.
CPPIB Invests $32M for retail development in India The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is investing $32 million in Pune for retail real estate development. Pune is one of India's fastest emerging cities, and has an attractive demographic and economic growth profile. The fast growing city is also an under-supplied retail market, making it an attractive investment opportunity. The CPPIB bought approximately 1.6 million square feet of land with plans for using one million square feet for retail space development. This new development will complement an existing mall in the eastern part of the city.
PM on a sales mission to Amazon Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has opened his marketing bag to display Canadian strengths to Amazon for setting up their second headquarters north of the border. In a two-page letter, dated Oct 13, addressed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (revealed by Brian Platt in the Ottawa Citizen), Trudeau has marketed the country as a whole without identifying any one Canadian city. Prime Minister Trudeau described the cities as "progressive, confident, and natural homes" for Amazon. In the letter, Mr. Trudeau put special emphasis on Canada as an open, tolerant and multicultural society, before going on to promote the business climate and educated workforce. The letter specifically mentions Canada’s efforts to attract skilled immigrants - a noted contrast to the restrictions in the U.S. The Primate Minister stated that “in the new economy, however, we recognize that we must also have access to the best talent in the world, wherever it is.”
Forbes magazine has released its 30 Under 30 list for 2018, and it features 600 young and rising stars across 20 industries. Meet the rising Indian/Indian-origin entrepreneurs who made the cut:
Retail and E-commerce Seema Bansal and Sunny Chadha The Venus ET Fleur co-founders have technology to ensure that roses last a full year in full bloom without water. Venus ET Fleur is profitable, and revenue, estimated at $7.5 million, has grown 226 per cent in the past year. By the end of the year, Bansal and Chadha plan to open their second distribution center in Los Angeles. Big Money Joel Pazhayampallil and Sameep Tandon Along with Will Wei Song, these two co-founded Drive.ai with $77 million in funding, this group of former members of the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Lab is building autonomous car tech primarily based on deep learning. Santosh Sankar He co-founded the Chattanooga-based venture capital firm Dynamo in December 2015 with Ted Alling, Barry Large and Allan Davis. So far, the company has remained focused on startups in the logistics technology space. Siddarth Satish He founded Gauss Surgical. Driving the company's growth is the app Sathish developed to monitor blood loss in the OR. It's been used for thousands of patients to make childbirth safer. Akash Shah He co-founded Care/of, a direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand that delivers personalized vitamin packs to consumers via a monthly subscription. It has raised $15 million to date. Education Vinay Bhaskara He co-founded CollegeVine with Zack Perkins and Johan Zhang. The freemium content hub is making high school guidance counseling more efficient and ubiquitous. Shiv Gaglani He co-founded the health and medical education company Osmosis. The company produces videos on topics ranging from aneurysms to Zika. The videos have been viewed more than 25 million time since January 2016 in over 200 countries. Arjun Singh Singh co-founded and co-developed Gradescope, an app that grades exams and provides teachers and students with instant feedback. Venture Capital Vivek Ladsariya The two-time founder is now partner at Sinewave Ventures. He has backed more than 30 companies, predominantly focused on enterprise tech. Food and Drink Shawn Nagpal He is the founder of Nagpal Restaurant Group, which owns and operates two restaurants in New York's Westchester county. Consumer Technology Shruti Merchant She co-founded HubHaus with Kerry Jones in 2016 to make it easy for professionals to find community in shared housing. Sundeep Kumar He co-founded LoftSmart with Sam Bernstein. Their company connects student renters to apartment buildings looking to fill leases. The company has processed millions in lease transactions and raised $5 million from investors. Abhishek Chandra He co-founded Spring Health with April Koh and Adam Chekroud at Yale University. Spring Health offers a mental health tool for large employers that screens employees for mental illness, develops personalized, data-driven treatment plans. Arun Saigal Along with co-founder WeiHua Li, Saigal decided to spin-out MIT's App Inventor tool, the drag-and-drop service for building your own app. The tools has already reached 4.3 million registered users and has made more than 13 million apps. Enterprise Technology Kumesh Aroomoogan and Anshul Vikram Pandey Co-founders of Accern Corporation, a real-time web surveillance platform that monitors 300 million websites. The service provides alerts to investors on actionable stories about US public companies. Saurabh Ladha He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Doxel, Inc, which monitors construction sites using autonomous robots, quantifies progress using deep learning-based computer vision, and provides managers with actionable insights to eliminate overruns and costly delays. Shahed Khan and Vinay Hiremath Along with Joe Thomas, they co-founded Loom, a video communication platform that enables teams to quickly record, edit and share complex information. Loom is already used by more than 250,000 employees at companies like Airbnb, and Dropbox. Health care Manik Bhat Along with co-founders Eric Conner, Dan Levenson and Alex Villa, Bhat created Healthify to connect Medicaid recipients in the US to social services. About 4 million people have benefited from Healthify and the company has raised $9.6 million to date. Akshaya Shanmugam She is the co-founder of Lumme where she developed software for smokers who want to quit. Lumme has raised $1.7 million in non-dilutive funding. Sourav Sinha He co-founded Oncolinx, which is testing antibodies aimed at activating the immune system. Clinical trials are set to begin in 2018. Social Entrepreneurs Arpit Dhupar and Kushagra Srivastava They created Chakr Innovation, which has the first system to capture harmful emissions from diesel generators. Energy Prateek Joshi He is the founder of Pluto AI, a startup that has built an intelligence platform for water facilities to reduce energy consumption, predict asset performance, and minimize operating costs. It has raised $2.1 million in seed funding. Manufacturing and Industry Kartik Tiwari He co-founded Starsky Robotics with Stefan Seltz-Axmacher. The company works on robots integrated with cameras and radar systems for long-haul driver-less trucks. The company, where Seltz-Axmacher is CEO and Tiwari is CTO, has raised $5.1 million. Youngest Rohan Pavuluri He co-founded Upsolve to give low-income Americans the means to get a fresh start through bankruptcy without having to hire a lawyer. Together with lawyer Jonathan Petts and programmer Kevin Moore, the Harvard student built an online tool that eases users through the process of inputting the financial information necessary to create a bankruptcy filing.
Young Innovators
All eyes on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2018
