Bangalore – Monday 04th February 2013: Bangalore India Bio 2013 (BIB 2013) – India’s premier Biotech Show organised by the department of Information Technology, Bio-Technology and Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka and the Vision Group on Biotechnology, featured a session “INCUBATING INNOVATION.” The session was Chaired by Ms. Deepanwita Chattopadhyay – Managing Director & CEO, IKP Knowledge Park and the incubating Companies were Mr. Udit Parekh – Co-Founder & Director, SABIO Innovative Solutions, Mr. Mainak Chakraborty – Founder-Director, Green Power Systems and Dr. Ashwini Nangia – Founder and CEO, Crystalin Research Pvt. Ltd.
Ms. Deepanwita Chattopadhyay in her address gave a overview of their role. She said, “The four pillars of life science are THE GOVERNMENT, INDUSTRY, ACADEMY and R&D and ENABLERS. And all of them have to be synergy. The incubation scenario with respect to INFRASTRUCTURE there are 150 incubators in science parks in India. DST has the largest in India. Others are ICAR, MSME, NIC and private companies. Among these there are 55 life sciences companies and 20 life sciences dedicated company. China has 2000 incubator at science park. And the Indian Government is planning for 800 incubators in five years time. On the Enterprises front NSTEDB provided 25000 startups, 26500 jobs and Rs. 70000 cr revenues. On the Funding front, funds from BIRAC, NSTEDB, TDB, TePP, MSME, Welcome Trust, Gates Foundation, US-India Science and Technology Endowment Fund etc. are available from 5lacs, to 2.5 cr rupees.”
The Expectations are low cost good quality space, equipments, funding, access to technology and network are challenges to modern STPs and Incubators. More diverse teams have higher chance of break through innovation. We have to find creative ways to build and map networks. India is not yet mapped properly and have to do that.” She concluded by saying, “the IKP Knowledge Park has 72 companies so far and 62% of these are small companies.”
Mr. Udit Parekh said, “We mainly focus on healthcare and diagnostics specializing in rapid diagnostics. We believe in “NOVEL AND HIGH VALUE SOLUTIONS.” Delivering products which are useful to the market. We mainly focus on Infectional Screening, Immune Response, Rapid Antibiotic Sensitive Test. We are also focused on Portability, Ease of Use and Rapidity. Their main work is on Rapid Screening Platform for Enumeration of Bacterial Load. Traditional approach require large sample and long time but at SABIO the processes are faster, and require less sample. Some of the challenges of Early Stage Companies are Space (Not able to get proper space), Difficulty in funding as it becomes very expensive, problems with the eco system, such as problems with good service providers. In-fact that is a recurring problem. There are network related problems, such as limitation to personal network, clearance and approval problems, which uses up a lot of time and money.”
“Because of these problems we decided to incubate, which already has space, funding etc. So we incubated with IKP. They have good space, and they do not have waiting period. Access to seed funding became easier with IKP. Network was very useful, as access to experts and broad network is available. They also get to work with other start-up companies. So they are also looking forward to future fund raising.”
Speaking about the Incubation Experience. He said, “we got seed funding at the ideal stage. Support on funding opportunities and project opportunity including regular product review and feedback on progress.”
Mr. Mainak Chakraborty in his talk said “we are a Waste Management Technology company based in Bangalore and our company has a team from IIT Kanpur and IIM Bangalore. Our main focus area is to generate clean energy by viable waste treatment in tier-1 cities of India. This can be achieved through a mechanized reactor called the “Biomethanation” Reactor or “BioOrja” its USP being to monitor tests and keep track of wastes generated. The only limitation of the reactor is that it is city centric. The innovations of Green Park Systems (GPS) is its implementation of the Supply Chain Models. Roadblocks in the path of GPS are Attracting talents – Most college graduates tend to quit Biotechnology after college due to the lack of scope, Hand-holding, Attracting seed fund and provide Infrastructure like Biotech Parks with labs and other equipments. GPS currently operates out of ICICI Knowledge Park or IKP, Hyderabad.”
Dr. Ashwini Nangia said, “we had a dream and converted that into reality 3 years ago. Our primary work is to develop “Improved Chemical Entities”(ICE’s). ICEs are insoluble drugs which are transformed into highly soluble solid forms. For eg. Chalk dust can be converted into table salt. This is the first such company in the country to do so, proving to be a value addition to the company. Over 80 percent of these drugs are sold in the solid form in India. Some of the drugs, however, are having solubility problems. The “Research Will” of CRPL is To develop co-crystal form of ICEs and To conduct clinical research on the ICEs.”
“CRPL operates out of two Incubator Parks, Technology Business Incubator (TBI), Hyderabad – This opened in January 2011 and serves as the centre for the chemistry phase of the projects. The other is ISI at IKP, Hyderabad- This opened in January 2012 for researching on cancer cell lines, and is hence used for the biology phase of the projects.” She added.
For more information on BangaloreINDIABIO2013,visit http://www.bangaloreindiabio.in