2nd edition of ‘National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition’ launched in Delhi

New Delhi: The National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition, a national platform to attract, identify, and nurture bio-entrepreneurs with path-breaking ideas for societal impact, was launched on 16th August, 2018 in New Delhi, by Prof. K VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India in the presence of Dr Mohd Aslam, Adviser, DBT and Managing Director, BIRAC, and Dr Manish Diwan, Head – SPED, BIRAC.

The National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition is organized by Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) as part of the BIRAC Regional Entrepreneurship Centre (BREC) established at C-CAMP, Bengaluru.

Announcing the competition open, Prof. K VijayRaghavan said, “A truly innovation led entrepreneurship requires a deep link between academia, entrepreneurship, and commercialization. Efforts such as the National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition are bridging this gap.”

This is the second edition of the competition and follows a highly successful first edition conducted in 2017 which attracted 1500+ applications from across 32 states/UTs in 14 biotech subdomains. Like the previous year, the competition is targeted at aspiring entrepreneurs, start-ups and small and medium enterprises across India.

Held over four months the competition will have a tiered selection process. The first round will comprise of regional qualifiers held across the country. Participants selected from the regional qualifiers will undergo intense mentoring at a residential entrepreneurship development boot camp in Bengaluru. This will be followed by the Grand Finale in December, where participants will compete for prizes by pitching before a grand jury. Applications are to be submitted on this weblink.

The entrepreneurs with the best ideas stand to win investment opportunities up to USD $200,000, cash prizes of INR 38 lakhs, mentorship by industry and investment experts and business acceleration. The prizes are sponsored by L’Oreal India Research and Innovation, HealthVenture Capital, Biocon, GE, Pfizer, and AWS. Investment partner is Social Alpha, mentorship partners are Biocon, Kotak Private Equity and Novozymes, CIIE, is the associate partner and CII is the Apex Industry Association Partner.

Dr Mohd. Aslam, Adviser, DBT and Managing Director, BIRAC, speaking at the launch event said, “BIRAC has supported 31 bio-incubators and 3 regional centres across the country to create entrepreneurial ecosystem and to support and promote scientific element of that ecosystem. The National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition (NBEC) brings together many partners from this ecosystem and we welcome this effort.”

Addressing the audience, Dr Manish Diwan, Head – SPED, BIRAC said, “BIRAC supports bio-entrepreneurs from idea to pre-commercialization stage. We are happy to support the National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition (NBEC) under BREC.”

Dr Taslimarif Saiyed, CEO and Director C-CAMP, said, “We are delighted that the Principal Scientific Adviser, Govt. of India has launched the 2nd edition of the competition. The first year of the competition enabled us to identify some of the best bio entrepreneurs across the country and incorporate them into the start-up fold. With the second year of this nation-wide competition we look forward to going one step further – identify disruptive technologies with societal impact and help them gain foothold in the market. We are extremely thankful to DBT and BIRAC for their continued support.”