BENGALURU: Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. This was true particularly in case of hte five startups that were funded anywhere between Rs 30 and 50 lakhs each by the Government of Karnatka (GoK) over the past two three for various innovations and then tweaked to meet demands for COVID19 use.
The prodcuts were launched by the deputy chief minister Ashwath Narayan on Tuesday, who took pride in six of the startups whose products were launched had been incubated at Bangalore Bioinnovation Centre (BBC), and five of them had received Government funding through the ELEVATE 100 programme by the state's Department of Information Technology and Biotechnology.
Girish R, Director BBC and MD KBITS told TNIE that the innovators, who have been funded by ELEVATE100 for the past few year, in months tweaked their products to meet the day to day needs for a COVID world.
Dr Govindaraju and Dr Meher Prakash from VNIR who developed Florescence probes and PCR mix for RT-PCR detection of COVID 19 were previously working on Molecular Probes to detect cow fever and won the Rs 30 lakh fund from GoK to scale up. They were simultaneously working on bio imaging ang diagnostics for alzheimers and malaria and cancer, when the pandemic hit in March.
"We decided to leverage our expertise in Molecular probes and streamlined our efforts to indegenise one of three crucial components of the RT PCR, the gold standard for SARS-CoV2 testing," Dr Govindaraju told TNIE.
Manjunatha from Denovo Bio labs who had developed an indegenous Viral Transport Media (VTM) with co-developer Dinesh, was working on PK ELISA kits for studying drug levels in clinical samples when the pandemic hit.
The team that received Rs 25 lakhs to develop smartphone based detection for thyroid profiling in 2018, is by essence a service provider during clinical research of drug development, Manjunatha told TNIE. They are now working on Atigen detection that will detect covid 19 in 30 mins time.
Adarsh Natarajan who developed Cov-Astra an Artificial intelligence based device for detection of COVID 19, had just released his cervical cancer detecting product 'Cervastra' using AI and pathology which was developed using the ELEVATE100's Rs 50 lakhs funding, when the pandemic hit.
The need for a screening tool for COVID19, prompted him, in April, to leverage his AI capabilities , he told TNIE. Adarsh developed an inexpensive first line of diagnosis that costs around Rs 200 and takes less than in 30 minutes to spot the glass obesity in the lungs using AI on chest X-Ray.
Based on papers published about plants having anti covid activity Hrishikesh Damle from Atrimed developed AYUSH-licensed plant based anti-microbial face wash from January that destroy the wall of the virus. He has been leveraging his right processing method for plant based molecules which he developed using part of the ELEVATE100 grant of Rs 25 lakhs in 2017 (the grant was mainly used for developing a topical solution for psoriasis), to manufacture COVID sanitser and now the face hair and hand wash.
He told TNIE he is awaiting the results of ICMR-approved test of 10 pure plant based molecules on a pseudo SARS-COV2 virus in Trivandrum and live virus in Faridabad, and after due process, hopes to give the first Indian molecule to the world through a COVID cure.
Dr Arun Agrawal from Janitri who developed Remote foetal monitoring device- Daksh, towards his aim of reducing maternal and foetal mortality, had leveraged maternal and foetal monitoring mechanism whose proof of concept he developed ELEVATE Rs 25 lakhs grant in 2017. He went on to create an intellgient labor monitoring mobile app and software in 60 hospitals in Kalaburgi, when the pandemic hit.
Following the need for a device to home monitor, he told TNIE, in consultation with doctors and patients, the system was improved for Feotal Montionrg Test NST for high risk and mid-risk women in 32 week of pregnancy, and are suggested this test twice a week. Its a product that can go home, while the doctor remotely monitors the health of the baby and mother. He's looking at launching it through a rental model.
The sixth product that was launched was UV-ROS box for COVID 19 sterilization developed by Mr Ravi Kumar from Biofi -- although he was not ELEVATE funded.