Growth in the Importance of IP for Indian Companies

Recently, Mumbai Angel investors and Inolyst became business partners. The aim of their partnership is to make Indian companies more strategic regarding IP aspects in their companies and equip them to become capital-efficient.

 

Mumbai Angels is an investment group, founded in 2006.The president of the Mumbai Angels, Anil Joshi, has indicated the motivation of the group of investors saying, “India is now realising the importance of IP because businesses are not restricted anymore to the domestic market, they need to be competitive in a global world and that is why they have started paying attention to the many ways in which IP can generate value for them”.

 

The biggest success of the Mumbai Angels was their investment in InMobi. InMobi is a network for mobile advertising and competes with the biggest players on the mobile advertising market, for example AdMob and iAD, subsidiaries of Google and Apple respectively. The angels have supported InMobi because they are the perfect example of a corporation that has valuable IP Assets needs to be maximized.

 

Mr Joshi indicates the fast growth of the economy in India, “Now we are seeing start-ups from a daily basis.” Because of the rapid expansion of the Indian economy, the various new companies need skills and expertise to be more strategic in creating and managing the valuable IP that they possess. The technical market of India is one of the biggest in the World, but many corporations forget to give the IP aspects as much attention as other forms of protecting, like for example their trade secrets.

“We entered into the partnership so that we can evaluate companies from an IP perspective, if we invest and even unknowingly the company is infringing on someone else’s patents, then potentially we are at risk. So we have to take it seriously and respect IP”

 

To disperse their ideas and create more awareness to the numerous companies that have recently started, Mumbai Angels gives various sessions and informationals on IP management and how to leverage the most value possible. A big problem in India is a large number of Indian companies ignore their IP and how it affects the value chain of the company. Most organizations do not spend adequate resources for the evaluation and protection of their IP. Other companies will follow Inolyst if the partnership is a success, especially if they are successful in creating additional value for the company and the projects that they choose to invest in.

 

Source:  I-AM Magazine

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