BENGALURU: Bengaluru-based startup Pentavalent Biosciences has won the national-level Tata Social Enterprise Challenge 2016-17, conducted by Tata group and the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Pentavalent’s latest innovation is FlapCut technology to detect tuberculosis and to help doctor prescribe patient-specific antibiotics. “TB is curable with at least 20 drugs available for treatment,” says its co-founder Soumya Paul, explaining why they focussed on zeroing down on medication.
“But the treatment fails because patient stops taking their medication, this leads to drug resistance and further treatment becomes difficult. It becomes essential to diagnose the infection in the patient with the pattern of drug susceptibility on day one.” Soumya and the other co-founder Bhavani have done their doctorate from the Defence Food Research Laboratory attached to DRDO in Mysuru.
Soumya is a virologist and molecular biologist and Bhavani, a microbiologist and molecular biologist. Soumya says that at the award function, at IIM-C, they found a few investors interested in their invention and entreprepreneurs also said that they would like to collaborate with the city-based startup.