The second edition of the National Bio Entrepreneurship competition, conducted by the C-CAMP-BIRAC’s joint initiative BIRAC Regional Entrepreneurship Centre (BREC), gives away Rs 2.25 crore-worth cash prizes to innovative startups.

Dr Vaishali Kulkarni, KBCols Sciences Pvt. Ltd and Nachiket, HelpUsGreen, are the joint winners of the L’Oreal India sponsored Grand Cash prize of Rs 15 lakh. Dr Vaishali also gets $100,000 investment from Social Alpha/Tata FISE.

Dr Vaishali is a winner of the 2015 edition of ABLE’s annual Biotechnology Entrepreneurship Student Teams (BEST) conducted on behalf of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) for college students.

And Sachin Dubey of Molecular Innovation (a BEST 2012 winner) was the joint winner of the second prize for excellence, sponsored by Biocon.

The National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition, a national platform for bio-entrepreneurs to present their innovative business ideas with significant societal impact in the Life Sciences domain, was concluded last week.

The competition, which is in its second year, is conducted by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms under the BIRAC Regional Entrepreneurship Centre (BREC), a joint initiative of C-CAMP and BIRAC.

A sum of Rs 2.25 crore in cash prizes and investment opportunity have been committed by various partners and stakeholders for this competition. The competition concluded in a gala Grand Finale held in Bengaluru where 15 bio-entrepreneurs pitched to a Grand Jury.

Mr Chandra Sekhar Seelamantula has won the  Rs 10 lakh Digital Health prize sponsored by HealthVenture, USA.

Mr Pranav Chopra, Crimson Healthcare Pvt Ltd and Mr Sachin Dubey, Module Innovations, are joint winners of the Rs 5 lakh Excellence Prize sponsored by Biocon. 

Mr Asif Ahmed of Innaumation Medical Devices bagged the Excellence Prize of  Rs 5 lakh sponsored by GE Healthcare.

Ms Shivani Gupta Inochi Care Pvt Ltd, received the Rs 3.5 lakh Pfizer Entrepreneurship Award in Healthcare.

Further, an Investment opportunity of $100,000 was announced by Social Alpha/Tata FISE for Ms Renuka Karandikar, BioPrime Agrisolutions and Dr Vaishali Kulkarni, KBCols Sciences.

Manoj Sankar, NemoCare won $100,000 investment opportunity from HealthVenture in Digital Health and a HealthVenture Boot Camp participation opportunity for Mr Bose Karthik, VRehab sponsored by HealthVenture.

Prize	Winner	Sponsor	Prize Amount
Grand Cash Prize	Vaishali Kulkarni, KBCols Sciences; Nachiket, HelpUsGreen	L’Oreal India	Rs 15 lakh
Digital Health prize	Chandra Sekhar Seelamantula	HealthVenture, USA	Rs 10 Lakh
Excellence Prize	Pranav Chopra, Crimson Healthcare Sachin Dubey, Module Innovations	Biocon	Rs 5 lakh
Excellence Prize	Asif Ahmed, Innaumation Medical Devices	GE Healthcare	Rs 5 Lakh
Pfizer Entrepreneurship Award	Shivani Gupta, Inochi Care	Pfizer	Rs 3.5 lakh
Investment opportunity	Renuka Karandikar, BioPrime Agrisolutions Vaishali Kulkarni, KBCols Sciences	Social Alpha/Tata FISE	$100,000
Investment opportunity in Digital Health	Manoj Sankar, NemoCare	HealthVenture	$100,000
HealthVenture Boot Camp	Bose Karthik, Vrehab	HealthVenture.

 

Forty Five (45) finalists were screened down from 2000+ registrations from across India participated in a two-day Boot Camp and Mentoring Sessions. Fifteen of these were selected by the Pre-Final Jury to pitch at the Grand Finale. The Grand Jury consisted of distinguished experts from the biotech industry and investment sector and included Mr Nitin Deshmukh, CEO and Founding Member, Kotak Private Equity; Ms Deepthi Reddy, Head Investments & Governance, Social Alpha; Dr Nita Roy, Head Advanced Research, L’Oreal India; Ms Donna Lecky, CFO, HealthVenture, USA; Dr Srinivasa Babu K, Regional Manager - Bioprocess, South India, GE Healthcare; Ms Aindrila Dasgupta, Head of Business Development, Novozymes South Asia; Mr Ashwin Raguraman, Co-founder and Partner, Bharat Innovation Fund; Dr Gopala Krishna Dasika, Senior Vice President and Head, Pfizer Biologics Development Center; Mr Naman Paithankar, Start-up Ecosystem, Amazon Web Services; and Dr Taslimarif Saiyed, CEO and Director, C-CAMP.

Dr Renu Swarup, Secretary DBT, Government of India, and Chairperson, BIRAC in an inspiring message for the winners and all Finalists, said, “The significance of a competition such as NBEC is in creating a vibrant pool of innovators. It helps connect various institutes in the country bringing in a pan-India flavour to the ecosystem. But the area where we have really succeeded is in projecting globally that India’s investment-ready startup market. I am very pleased that BIRAC and CCAMP are working together in this important initiative. I hope many other incubators become partners in this larger exercise.”

Mr Gaurav Gupta, Principal Secretary, Department of IT, BT and S&T, Goverment of Karnataka, in his Keynote Address, said “Karnataka continues to attract a lot of attention from life sciences startups. It’s important that academia, industry and the government work together closely to keep the ecosystem energised. CCAMP especially is like the nucleus of deep science research based bio ideas.”

ABLE-BEST winners--KBCols Sciences and Module Innovations--win the second edition of National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition.