A Platform For Entrepreneurs To Pitch Ideas To Investors

The Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IIT-H)’s Center for Healthcare Entrepreneurship (CfHE) will hold the graduation of its third batch on August 8 by hosting a ‘pitching session’ for its fellows with investors — venture capital and private equity firms.

The session will help the CfHE fellows convert their ideas and innovations into health technology products that will cater to unmet needs of the Indian healthcare sector, said U.B. Desai, head of Operations, CfHE-IITH, and founding director, IIT-H. CfHE has incubated seven startups that were founded by its fellows.

The CfHE also houses a healthcare incubator, which is connected to the community of venture capitalists and angel investors who keep interacting with the startups on a regular basis. CfHE-incubated companies such as BeAble Pvt. Ltd. and Nemocare Wellness Pvt. Ltd. from the first batch have attracted grants to the tune of ₹2 crore and are set to become independent and enter the market at an early stage. Two CfHE companies have been awarded the Melinda Gates Foundation grant for Global Health.

Medical devices
Speaking about CfHE, Rajesh Mashruwala, a bay area entrepreneur and IIT-Bombay alumni who helped establish CfHE, said: “Unlike many incubators and accelerators, CfHE has been established as a non-profit organisation with a strategy to kickstart medical device innovation. India is going to need a domestic supply of medical devices designed specifically for local requirements. The Center has India’s first rapid prototyping facility intended for medical device development. CfHE was modeled after by some of the Stanford University’s Bio-design Program faculty.”

CfHE offers fellowship in healthcare entrepreneurship focussed on biodesign innovation through a structured and immersion-based curriculum that is completed in a year. The fellows enrolled in this program undergo a thorough immersion in the clinical environment to identify the unmet needs. This is followed by training in needs analysis, solutions and business plan development.

The startups coming out of CfHE have ambitious plans to impact the healthcare sector. Cyril Antony, co-founder of Aerobiosys, said, “We are a medical device company focused on unmet health care needs in respiratory care domain. We aim to provide technology for continuous and efficient monitoring of respiratory care in patients under ventilation.”

Rajesh Thangavel, co-founder of Aerobiosys, added, “We have come up with an idea to develop an AI-enabled ‘Smart Duo-vent’ for patients in the critical care unit with respiratory illness. The artificial intelligence algorithm used in this product detects each breath of the patient and gives alarm using our IoT-enabled smart alerting technology. The novel recovery rate monitoring in our product helps the doctors to efficiently wean the patient from ventilator. Our unique profit sharing business model will cut down the cost of ventilation by 80%. This device will be essential for low-resource settings of developing countries such as India.” – The Hindu