Ashok Jhunjhunwala

Ashok Jhunjhunwala is an Institute Professor at IIT Madras, and Chairman of Immersive Technology and Entrepreneurship Labs (ITEL), and IIIT Hyderabad. Until recently, he was the founder IITM Research Park and IITM Incubation Cell, and till recently its President. He completed his B. Tech degree from IIT Kanpur and his MS and PhD from the University of Maine, USA, and served as a faculty at Washington State University, USA for a year and a half. He was a faculty at IIT Madras from 1981 to 2023 and is currently an Institute Professor at IIT Madras. He is also the Chairman of the CSIR Advisory Board.

Prof. Jhunjhunwala is considered a pioneer in nurturing Industry-Academia interaction in India towards R&D, Innovation and Product Development. He conceived and built the IIT Madras Research Park to promote Industry-Academia R&D, Collaboration and Innovation.

His current focus is on ITEL to make India a leader in Technology in about ten areas over the next decade. He is mobilizing researchers all over the country to work together and work with start-ups and industry to take up near-impossible problems of India and use innovation to solve them; thereby becoming technology leader in the world.

TIE conferred on him the title of Dronacharya for his contributions to the cause of entrepreneurship, as he incubated and nurtured more than 350 companies at the IITM Incubation Cell and Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI). He led the TeNeT group, which creates innovative affordable products in sectors such as telecom, banking, energy, and electric vehicles.

Prof. Jhunjhunwala was conferred the Padma Shri, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, Vikram Sarabhai Research Award, H. K. Firodia Award, Silicon India Leadership Award, Forbes Ecosystem Enabler Award, and many others.