Nature India | Indigenus

Market-worthy ideas, anyone?

A new business plan competition for researchers from India and the UK hopes to identify the most promising scientific advances with equally brilliant commercial spin-offs. This is the kind of boost that young researchers in this country are looking for. It would be interesting to see what innovative ideas come in for the competition from India and, of course, which ones finally win.

The competition is led by The University of Nottingham, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. It will provide support to help the brightest and the best of scientists with “promising scientific advances underpinning a business idea to progress their concept towards commercial reality.”

The contest provides a new chance for winning entrants to gain funding to build healthcare or pharmaceutical businesses from their ideas.The idea is to create real businesses in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector. The competition will hopefully see the launch of new companies and technologies in both countries by helping scientists with groundbreaking ideas work with the business and intellectual property experts required to translate ideas into products.

During the first round, teams are required to complete a short business plan executive summary. The deadline for submissions is May 14, 2010.

The best entry from India will get a package of benefits worth over Rs 15 lakhs to assist in starting up a new company, including Rs 5 lakhs cash award for early start-up costs, two years’ incubation facilities at SIDBI-Innovation & Innovation Centre (SIIC) at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, providing room space, accommodation and support with IPR protection costs, lab testing and prototyping costs.

Pradip Bhatnagar, Senior Vice-President of Drug Discovery Research at Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd in India says the competition will help unlock the vast potential of India’s pharmaceutical and healthcare research.

More information is here.

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Nakul Dantara said:

    As per your post it seems this competition is only limited to the Healthcare industry. I just wanted to confirm it this is true, or the competition will also accept projects outside of the healthcare industry.

  2. Report this comment

    Subhra Priyadarshini said:

    Yes, Nakul. The competition is for business ideas in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector.