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 concluded recently. 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. Rs 2.25 crore in cash prizes and investment opportunity have been committed by various partners and stakeholders for this competition. Conducted over four months the competition culminated today with a gala Grand Finale held in Bengaluru where 15 bio-entrepreneurs pitched to a Grand Jury.

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 lakhs. Chandra Sekhar Seelamantula has won the Rs 10 lakhs Digital Health prize sponsored by HealthVenture, USA. Pranav Chopra, Crimson Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. and Sachin Dubey, Module Innovations are joint winners of the Rs 5 lakhs Excellence Prize sponsored by Biocon. Asif Ahmed of Innaumation Medical Devices, LLP has won Excellence Prize of Rs 5 lakhs sponsored by GE Healthcare. Shivani Gupta, Inochi Care Pvt. Ltd., received the Rs 3.5 lakh Pfizer Entrepreneurship Award in Healthcare. Investment opportunity of $100,000 was announced by Social Alpha/Tata FISE for Renuka Karandikar, BioPrime Agrisolutions and 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 Bose Karthik, VRehab sponsored by HealthVenture.

45 finalists screened down from 2000+ registrations from across India participated in a 2 day Boot Camp and Mentoring Sessions. 15 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 Nitin Deshmukh, CEO and Founding Member, Kotak Private Equity, Deepthi Reddy, Head Investments & Governance, Social Alpha, Dr. Nita Roy, Head Advanced Research, L’Oreal India, Donna Lecky, CFO, HealthVenture, USA, Dr. Srinivasa Babu K, Regional Manager - Bioprocess, South India, GE Healthcare, Aindrila Dasgupta, Head of Business Development, Novozymes South Asia, Ashwin Raguraman, Co-founder and Partner, Bharat Innovation Fund, Dr. Gopala Krishna Dasika, Senior Vice President and Head, Pfizer Biologics Development Center, 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.”

Gaurav Gupta, Principal Secretary, Department of IT, BT and S&T, Govt. 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.”

The competition [https://www.nationalbioentrepreneurship.in/events/nbec2018] in its second edition had 11 industry partners including one international partner from the USA on board: L’Oréal India, HealthVenture (USA), Biocon, GE Healthcare, Pfizer Healthcare India, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Social Alpha, Kotak Private Equity, Novozymes, CIIE (IIM Ahmedabad), and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Dr. Taslimarif Saiyed, CEO & Director, C-CAMP said “NBEC is truly a celebration of bio entrepreneurship in India. The BIRAC Regional Entrepreneurship Centre, BREC at CCAMP that organises NBEC every year is amplifying the spirit of entrepreneurship through competitions such as this to build a critical mass of deep-science innovations across every state and UT in India. NBEC industry partners who have come forward to sponsor prizes, funding and mentorship also play a crucial role in the success of such a competition.”