Entrepreneurship is about how you monetise an idea: Kiran Mazumdar Shaw

“Entrepreneurship is about how you monetise an idea and take it to market. So don’t wait for the perfect idea or wait for that one good idea,” said Dr Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon Ltd.

Addressing the C-CAMP National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition - a nationwide platform for bio-entrepreneurs to showcase their tech business ideas in the Life Sciences and biotech domain, Shaw, said “Shape your ideas and begin the commercialisation journey and scale it up. Because impact and true recognition lie only in scaling.”

She further exhorted entrepreneurs to see their innovation from idea through product stage.

Award winners

Divanshu of Alcheme was awarded the WIN Foundation cash prize of Rs 7.5 lakhs as well as their investment opportunity of Rs 30 lakhs in water and sanitation category. Mayur Shetty of Blackfrog Technologies received the WIN Foundation cash prize of Rs 7.5 lakhs and also the WIN Foundation investment opportunity of Rs 30 lakhs in maternal and child health category.

Blackfrog swooped up the Social Alpha investment opportunity of $100,000 too for their astounding potential for social impact. Ragul Paramasivam of Chimertech Innovations LLP, won the Ankur Seeds award of Rs 5 lakhs in agri-biotech category as well as the ID capital investment opportunity of $100,000 as top agri-biotech, food and nutraceuticals entrepreneur.

Shomeshwar Singh of 4S Medical Research, was awarded the Digital Health cash prize of Rs 5 lakhs sponsored by HealthVenture, USA.

Prakhar Jain of MicroX Labs won the Applied Materials India award of Rs 5lakhs in medtech innovation category.

Rajesh Nandipati of Oncosimis Biotech received the Rs 5 lakhs Excellence Prize sponsored by Biocon.

Asawari Kane of PadCare Labs was awarded the Novozymes Excellence Prize of Rs 3 lakhs.

The Pfizer Entrepreneurship Award of Rs 3.5lakhs went to Arindam Ghatak of Biomoneta.

Halagappa Eswarappa Shashidhar of CultivaAgriTech received the Mahyco cash prize of Rs 1 lakh in Agri-Biotech.

An Investment opportunity of $75,000 from HealthVenture, USA in Digital Health was announced for Rohit Hiwale of Morphle Technologies.

Finally, a special prize from C-CAMP’s end was awarded to Shilpa Malik of Bioscan Research.

Boot camp/mentoring sessions

At the NBEC about 65 start-ups gleaned from over 3,000 registrations across 33 States/UTs had participated in the two-day Boot Camp and Mentoring Sessions with mentors from CIIE - IIM Ahmedabad prior to the finals.

The competition in its third edition had 17 industry partners including international partners from the USA, France and Singapore on board: WIN Foundation, Ankur Seeds, Applied Materials India, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Biocon, CIIE – IIM Ahmedabad, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), CNBC-TV18 Young Turks, GE, HealthVenture - USA, Hello Tomorrow, ID Capital, Kotak Private Equity, Mahyco, Novozymes, Pfizer, and Social Alpha.

Dr Taslimarif Saiyed, CEO & Director, C-CAMP said, “CCAMP believes that through fostering deep science innovations we have an opportunity to make a major impact in India’s growth. CCAMP is dedicated to play this vital role and looks forward to working together with you towards building tomorrow’s innovations from India.”