C-CAMP is organising the third edition of National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition (NBEC), a national competition to attract, identify, and nurture bio-entrepreneurs with path-breaking ideas for societal impact. Held every year since 2017 by C-CAMP under BREC – The BIRAC Regional Entrepreneurship Centre, NBEC has emerged as the largest and most prestigious platform to showcase exciting deep science and deep technology innovations in the field of biosciences from all across India.

What sets NBEC apart from similar challenges are three striking factors: 1) its scale and breadth, 2) the diversity of ideas and 3) impact of ideas it attracts.

NBEC has witnessed an unprecedented response from across the country.  Case in point – 3500+ innovators registered for the competition  from as many as 32 states/UTs in India during the past two editions. 

Moreover, NBEC receives business ideas representing all sub-domains of Life Sciences, including healthcare, medical devices, digital health, agri-biotech, animal health, and industrial biotech. All are affordable solutions with far-reaching impact on the many critical gaps that exist in the spheres of Indian healthcare, agriculture, food, nutrition and environment. An example of this multiplicity would be the array of innovation areas of previous NBEC winners.

Some of the innovations that have been brought to the forefront by NBEC are an  affordable and sustainable technology for controlled delivery of biofertilisers in farms; IOT based solutions for neonatal ICUs; sustainable women’s hygiene solutions; a personal hygiene innovation to address non-availability of water; a smart image analytics technology for point of care screening for eye disease; a point of care, bacteria specific rapid diagnostics for urinary tract infections; an ultra-low cost voice prosthetic device for rehabilitating throat cancer; a wearable, remote baby health monitoring device;  microbial colorants to replace industrially used chemical laden colours; value added products from mass scale dry floral waste that is generated in temples; a virtual reality based rehabilitation platform for treatment of autism and brain stroke. Winning innovations at NBEC thus address unmet societal needs with technology that span the entire gamut of health, food, nutrition, environment and bioscience. NBEC has also brought to the forefront women entrepreneurs leading deep tech innovation driven ventures.  Another interesting facet is the talent and aspirations of innovators from tier 2 and tier 3 cities and towns of India. 

Stressing upon the flexibility of NBEC as a platform, Dr Taslimarif Saiyed, C-CAMP CEO and Director has said “NBEC allows talent to be showcased regardless of any eligibility criteria. The ideas for NBEC could be from students or scientists, early stage to a late stage entrepreneur. The platform gives visibility to all. Especially important is the visibility among key industry experts many of whom are partnering with C-CAMP in handholding winners to oversee their growth to the next level.”

NBEC 2019 partner, Kotak Private Equity bank Founder, Nitin Deshmukh has said “We have been a witness to the evolution of this competition as a successful national showcase for passionate and talented teams who present unique solutions to the toughest problems across the biotech spectrum of biopharma, medtech and agritech. NBEC can be easily counted amongst the best national business plan pitch events in India.”

This year NBEC will give away a total Rs 3Cr in cash prizes and investment opportunities. Besides, winners will also get access to mentorship by key industry leaders, seed funding and business acceleration networks. Innovators, if yours is a potentially disruptive idea in bioscience, apply to www.nationalbioentrepreneurship.in/events/nbec2019 by 14th September 6pm.