Wadhwani Innovation Network (WIN)

Wadhwani Innovation Network — Center of Excellence Research Grants

Funds Indian Center of Excellence teams working on deep technology and bioengineering commercialization.

The Wadhwani Innovation Network (WIN) Center of Excellence grants are private institutional grants from the Wadhwani Foundation, a U.S.-based philanthropic organization co-founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Romesh Wadhwani. WIN funds interdisciplinary research-to-commercialization projects at six named partner Centers of Excellence hosted by elite Indian academic institutions. Each Center of Excellence receives up to US $1 million annually. The six founding Phase 1 partners are C-CAMP (bioengineering and biotechnology), IIT Delhi (healthtech and bioengineering), IIT Kanpur (synthetic biology, biotech therapeutics, AI), IISc Bangalore (quantum computing), IIT Bombay (AI, healthtech, biotech therapeutics), and IIT Hyderabad (healthtech, advanced computing, AI).

A second phase, structured as a partnership with AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education), extends the program to AICTE's 13 Innovation Centers and more than 100 affiliated higher education institutions, with a joint investment of US $10 million per year. Project selection under the AICTE pipeline is made by a national jury of experts. The Wadhwani Research Centre for Bioengineering at IIT Bombay, which preceded WIN and was founded in 2014, provides a track record benchmark: 97 funded projects, 11 startup companies formed, six technologies licensed to industry, and more than 80 patents filed.

This is not an open public call. Funding flows from the Wadhwani Foundation to the named institutional CoE hosts, which then administer sub-grants to faculty, researchers, and student teams at their respective institutions. The $1 million per year figure is the institutional-level grant to each CoE, not a per-project sub-award. Researchers and teams seeking funding must engage through their institution's designated CoE or, under Phase 2, through an AICTE Innovation Center. The priority technology areas are artificial intelligence, semiconductor technology, quantum computing, bioengineering, healthtech, space technology, and synthetic biology.