BENGALURU: Six biotechnology startups from the city are currently participating in BIO 2019, an international biotech expo being held in Philadelphia, United States, till June 6. The startups – Sensitisation, Health Technologies, Mocxa Health, Retisense, Atrimed Biotech, Viable Near Infra Red (VNIR) Biotechnologies and Denovo Biolabs – are attending the three-day session, featuring 16,000 delegates from 74 countries.
“On the agenda are sessions on business partnering, education, networking, and an exhibition showcasing the promising advancements that the biotech sector is delivering. While it is an excellent platform for bio-startups to seek funding opportunities and potential buyers, it is also the perfect platform for like-minded interactions and exchange of ideas,” said Jitendra Kumar, managing director of Bangalore Bioinnovation Centre, which provides incentives, funding, training programmes made available from the state government in the field of bio-technology.
The six startups are partially funded by Karnataka Innovation and Technology Society (KITS), under the Karnataka startup policy of the Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science & Technology. They are attending the exposition as a part of the startup policy’s provision for ‘capacity building through exposure visits and workshops’. The firms get the opportunity to present their products which could open doors for them in terms of licensing, partnership, clinical studies, funding and FDA certification.
Anshuman Singh, the director of Retisense, which works in the field of healthcare in sports, said, “We build medical sensing devices for use in physiotherapy, rehabilitation and diabetic foot treatment, with the primary focus being provision of home-based diagnostics solutions. We are looking to demonstrate our solution in this conference as well as discuss opportunities for clinical studies using our products. Through this, we can achieve research backing for our product, and eventually get our product FDA certified.”
Exploring new possibilities was also on the mind of Jayadeep, the founder and CEO of Sensivision Health Technologies, a medical device company focused on critical care segment of neonates. “We are focused on asphyxia management among newborns. Hence for our current and future pipeline of products, BIO International Convention would be a great place to collect new ideas to build on.”
Among the six startups, Atrimed and VNIR Biotechnologies are funded under Idea2PoC scheme and are also incubated at Bangalore BioInnovation Center. The others are registered startups which receive mentoring or funding from the state government. Apart from these, other established biotechnology companies from Karnataka are independently participating in the expo.