The Center for Nondestructive Evaluation (CNDE) of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras today introduced a new brand identity and website, marking a change in how the centre presents itself to industry and research partners worldwide.
CNDE was founded in 2001 by Professor Krishnan Balasubramanian. The change reflects how the centre's role has widened since then. CNDE now offers industry one route for an inspection problem: research and consultancy, feasibility studies in its world-class facilities, deployment through its spin-off companies, and advanced training for engineers.
"CNDE has grown from an academic group doing research for industry into a centre whose technology is used on four continents. Industry now demands much more, so we are transforming both the structure and the culture of the centre. This new identity reflects that change, and our confidence that India can solve inspection problems for the world." said Prof. Krishnan Balasubramanian, Founder and Head of CNDE.
Over 25 years, research at CNDE has led to 150+ patents filed and 14 deep-tech companies, which together employ more than 1,400 people and operate in over 12 countries. They include Dhvani Research, Detect Technologies, Planys Technologies, Solinas Integrity and XYMA Analytics. Technologies that began at the centre are in use for corrosion inspection of in-service pipe supports and storage tanks, railway track inspection, and temperature measurement in furnaces up to 1,500°C.
The rebrand also covers the National Consortium for Non-Destructive Evaluation (NCNDE), which CNDE established in November 2024. NCNDE exists to unite the three groups that shape the field: the developers who build inspection technology, the industries that depend on it, and the research and academic institutions that advance it. Each has long worked with limited sight of the others. The consortium brings them onto one platform to solve the critical inspection challenges that no single organisation can solve alone, and to set the direction of NDE together.
Its members steer the research agenda through the consortium's board and share in what the work produces. NCNDE began with 10 founding members and is open to organisations worldwide.
"We are not becoming something new. We are finally looking like what we already are.” said Govind Walavalkar, Strategic Advisor - Brand&Growth, CNDE. "What worked for a departmental research lab does not work in a boardroom in Houston or on a conference stage in Singapore. We have moved from a logo to a brand system, and from India-facing to world-facing.” Govind continued.
The new identity covers both CNDE and NCNDE. The CNDE mark is a twin-arch form that also reads as a cross-section, the internal view that inspection exists to give. NCNDE houses the same mark inside a probe-shaped outline, so the two are recognisably one family. The new website is organised around the ways an organisation can work with the centre.
Watch the short film on YouTube, in which Professor Krishnan Balasubramanian, founder of CNDE, discusses the centre’s evolution since 2001.
Reference: https://cnde.iitm.ac.in/
