How Tata Steel is learning from deeptech startups and helping them grow
Over the last five years, Tata Steel has built strong bonds with the deeptech startup community. The goal now is to build a larger ecosystem to encourage innovative technology solutions.
Tata Steel is easily one of the most hallowed names of corporate India with a history of more than 115 years. A pillar of the industrial age in India, the company has been looking to integrate emerging technologies to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving technology world.
Over the last five years, Tata Steel has built bonds with the startup community through its engagement programme - Innoventure. The initiative has seen the participation of around 1,200 startups to address challenges in the steel value chain through technological interventions.
One of these challenges is decarbonisation as the energy-intensive steel industry has a large carbon footprint, contributing 8% to the global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, as per World Steel Association. Also, while India’s demand for steel is skyrocketing, the potential capacity of Indian steel plants rarely reaches 80%.
Now, Tata Steel is looking towards deeptech startups to iron out processes in the core areas of energy management, integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), robotics, sustainability etc. In 2022, it signed a Memorandum of Agreement with deeptech startup TuTr to deploy Hyperloop technology at scale.
The company is also engaged with various stakeholders, including academic institutes like IIT Madras, Cambridge University, and Imperial College of London, as well as incubators and accelerators.
In an interview with EnterpriseStory, Dr Debashish Bhattacharjee, Vice President, Technology and R&D, Tata Steel agrees that collaborating with startups has brought agility and opened the company’s mind.
“We are able to take advantage of the creativity, passion and agility of these deeptech startups to move fast in technologies which are new to us,” he remarked.
Edited excerpts of the interview:
YourStory [YS]: What is Tata Steel’s strategy behind engaging with deeptech startups?
Debashish Bhattacharjee [DB]: There are two intents. One is a strategic position that Tata Steel has taken since 2017 to achieve leadership in technology. The second is to tap the rapid changes in the external world which has an influence on our business.
So far, our research, development and technology have been focused on our core—mines, minerals, coatings etc, and the mainstream steelmaking processes. Now, we are progressively seeing that externalities are playing an influential role.
CO2 now plays a critical role in determining the technology which we engage with. Energy, which we all are using from the grid, cannot be ignored because it now needs to have a green footprint.
Water is a critical input for steel plants. Today, water needs to be conserved, and not only that, we aim not to let any water go out of our factories.
We are greatly influenced by these externalities and these technologies are new to us. They are defining the course and even the existence of the steel business. Now, in order to gain knowledge and bring in people who are aware of these technologies, it will take a lot of effort to build our internal team.
So, one of the pillars of attaining technology leadership is collaboration with academia. While ideation is mostly done at universities, the academic idea needs to be upscaled, tested, proof of concept established, and then translated into the industry—that’s where the deeptech startups come in. They have already tested their ideas at the university labs.
Our strategic intent behind engaging with startups was to take technology leadership as a strategic enabler for the company and to be able to take advantage of the creativity, passion and agility of startups to move fast in technologies, which are new to us. This will enable us to move ahead of the curve.
YS: How does Tata Steel engage with startups?
DB: Our engagement with startups is theme-based and driven by the company’s needs. This is where our Innoventure programme comes in, which is like a matchmaking platform. On the one side, you have the business needs and the other side is the universe of deeptech startups.
These startups are put into categories important to our business such as safety, carbon capture utilisation, hydrogen, advanced mobility, AI, ML, etc. There are screenings and pitch sessions to curate these startups. Over the last five years, we have carried out proof of concept (PoC) experiments at our plants with 40-odd deeptech startups. Pilot plants are being set up and funded by grants.
Once successful, these startups are free to go to whichever sector their technologies find application as the Tata Steel test case gives them that added value. We give them the opportunity to upscale.
YS: What themes does Tata Steel work on when engaging with startups?
DB: We look at multiple accelerators. For example, there are accelerators dedicated to advanced materials—it could even be coatings on steel—where you will find startups that are working on certain novel ideas. However, 60% of startups are focused on sustainability because that's where the technology is most evolving and is the most influential.
We are engaged with startups working in advanced mobility like Hyperloop technology, AI, ML for large-scale modelling, etc. We also work with deeptech startups that have robots which can go underwater.
YS: What has been the experience with these startups?
DB: I think slowly our systems are adapting to the way startups work.
One of the first systems that needed to quickly adapt and effectively was the procurement system. There is a process in any big company that onboards new vendors and asks for things like PF statements, ESI, P&L statements etc, but these are not something which you can ask from a startup. I think this introduced nimbleness in certain processes because of startups.
Also, it has opened our minds that you can think of something and the solution is possible.
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YS: Is Tata Steel building an ecosystem for deeptech startups?
DB: Absolutely. One of our missions is to build an ecosystem by not only giving them opportunities but also giving recognition. For example, we carry out competitions like ‘Materials Next’ for startups. This may or may not be directly linked to our current businesses.
If the ecosystem is such that it encourages people to become entrepreneurs then a lot of ideas emerge and some good ones eventually come into the market.
YS: What are the future plans when it comes to connecting with startups?
DB: The next step of this programme will be to quickly monetise the startups.
In a way, we have taken a leap from the R&D stage to PoCs, and some of the startups are just inching towards full-scale industrial applications. Very few of them have reached this stage. So, as a next step, I would want some of the 40-odd startups we are engaged with to operate on an industrial scale. It will happen as there is hunger among these startups and their mindset is different from ours.
As much as we learn a lot from these startups, they also need a lot of hand-holding, especially in terms of technical guidance which is vital.
Edited by Kanishk Singh