EVA: An accelerator founded by veterans in Bangalore

The flourishing R&D eco-system in Bangalore, which is home to many incubators and accelerators, will see the launch of an accelerator called Escape Velocity Accelerator (EVA) on Saturday.

Dedicated exclusively to the life science and healthcare domains, EVA will assist startups working in these two domains drive innovation, commercialise their ideas, access global markets and attract funding from VCs and PEs, while at the same time providing startups with the necessary operational, strategic, mentorship and organisational support.

EVA already has three startups working with them and will enrol 10-12 companies a year and work with them for 12-18 months till they move to the next level of growth. Proposals are accepted only from companies that have an early proof of concept or prototype, which will be evaluated by the EVA team to ascertain its suitability to the EVA business model.

EVA is founded by stalwarts with a collective experience of over 100-plus years in biotechnology, information technology, healthcare and business incubation, who will serve as the in-house mentor team focusing on knowledge transfer and resource provision to create smart successful businesses.

The six founders are Ram Subramanian, CEO & co-founder of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platform (CCAMP); Swami Manohar, who co-founded Strand Life Sciences, PicoPeta Simputers and Limberlink Technologies; Anand Anandkumar, founder CEO of Bugworks and General Secretary of ABLE (Association of Biotech Lead Enterprises); Shrikumar Suryanarayan, former President of R&D at Biocon and Director General of ABLE; Ricky Bedi, CEO of Telerad Tech; and Ashok Vohra, CEO and founder of Evoma, an eco-system designed for business incubation and entry of organizations into India.

“To start with, we have contributed to a seed fund of ₹1 crore which could increase over time, and will be invested in startups that require angel investments. We will acquire 5-10 per cent stake in all the companies that we provide our services to, while the IP ownership remains with the companies. We hope to make true returns only when the companies exit successfully and get into Series A funding at good valuations or get acquired by a strategic partner. Therefore, our success is directly connected to the success of the companies we accelerate,” said Ashok Vohra, co-founder of EVA.

EVA guarantees mission critical infrastructure and startup teams can work out of fully functional offices in Japan, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. To support young companies EVA has taken a 100-seat space in a research-incubation facility – EVOMA in Bangalore. EVA also provides on-demand business support services such as secretarial, administrative etc to enable uninterrupted and flexible functioning.

The following form part of EVA’s current portfolio:

SKL Medtech Pvt Ltd, a Tirupur-based company that develops technical textiles for the medical industry such as, anti-microbial wound dressing, has developed a lightweight X-ray attenuation fabric that can be worn as a shirt to replace heavy 8.5 kg lead aprons that are worn to block radiation.

Lucep, which works in the area of mobility, big data and analytics and extends mobility and data platform to healthcare delivery. The company also offers customer experience management solutions on a SaaS model to BFSI industry.

Bugworks, that works on creating new antibiotics that can withstand drug-resistance issues using mathematical modelling techniques to reduce drug discovery time by as much as 30 per cent.

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