Dr. Vipin Kumar is Chief Scientist and Former Director at the National Innovation Foundation – India (NIF). His research and interest areas are incubation and promotion of inclusive and demand driven innovations by way of value addition, intellectual property protection, business development, commercialization and developing of open-source technologies for the generation of employment opportunities for many. He incubated several innovative technologies which made their way to the domestic and international market.

Dr. Kumar has worked for boosting Innovation and Entrepreneurship eco-system in the country particularly from less visible but high societal impact areas. He played an important role in positioning grassroots innovations as a reality substantiated with a portfolio of innovations, more importantly accessible to common people in India and abroad. In situ incubation of innovations for entrepreneurship and inclusive development is his key focus. To incubate the grassroots innovations, he generated mechanism and established networks with S&T institutions and companies. Keeping pace with the changing times and responding to newer drivers of change and with an objective to create wider possibilities for commercialization, NIFientreC was set up by him with the support of DST in 2015 as Technology Business Incubator.

He has worked as a resource person in UNESCO’s course on Innovation Management and workshops for policymakers, and researchers to develop the road map for innovation incubation and promotion in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. He has served as the Chairperson/Member of various committees of the Union and State Governments as well as the Governing Board / Executive Committee Member of various prestigious Institutions.

For over two decades of career, his leadership motivated common people to deliver Innovative Technologies to solve societal problems, generate stories of social transformations that made the country proud and destined to empower India’s STI journey through a dependable institutionalizing of Innovations.