The meeting commenced with Dr. V.K.Singh, Managing Director of InnovatioCuris and InnovatioCuris Foundation of Healthcare & Excellence, introducing the IC InnovatorCLUB and the motive behind having “Young Innovators” as the theme for the edition of the meeting. He pronounced the pace of the waves at which the young generation is striding and their level of all round understanding of aspects which took years to research. He was particularly exuberant for this edition of the meeting which consisted of presentations and panel discussion charting guests from different generations with various facets of innovation. 

Dr. Singh introduced the presenters and panelists of the meeting starting with Dr. Mohit Gambhir, Innovation Director @ Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell, Govt. of India, Mr. Harmanjot Singh, who at a tender age of 14-year-old has created three award-winning Mobile Apps. One of his app for women’s safety called Raksha has won him Prime Minister Bal Puraskar for the year 2021, Mr. Abhik Saha another young innovator who at the age of 15 years was awarded the Gandhian Young Innovation Award (GYTI) 2018 by President Ram Nath Kovind at the Festival of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (FINE) and, Dinesh C Sharma, is an award-winning journalist, author and media trainer with over 35 years’ experience of reporting on science and technology, health and environment for national and international media outlets and has recently composed a book on the top 100 innovations from India.

Dr. Singh further mentioned about the InnoHEALTH magazine which is circulated to a huge global healthcare community consisting of 95000 subscribers. The interview of Harmanjot Singh, who is a 14 year old Bal Puraskar awardee and a panelist in this edition of IC InnovatorCLUB meeting, will be published in the upcoming edition of the magazine scheduled to be released in March 2022. He also urged that more interviews, experiences and journeys of the younger generation be published to promote visibility and garner the young minds of the nation. He highlighted the focus of the Prime Minister of India on innovations, unicorns and the supporting tools for these like conducting hackathons, eg; IDEAthon, SAMADHAN, Smart India Hackathon with Dr. Mohit Gambhir through the Ministry of Education who was the organizer.He optimistically mentioned that, though India was at 46th and 40th position on the innovation index in 2000 and 2021, still India is a home for 81 unicorns with a total valuation of 279 billion USD. Out of these, 43 unicorns are valued at 89 billion happening only in the last year. USA stood at the top in the number of unicorns whereas India stood in the 4th place, behind China and UK. He stated that the pandemic has forced the country into frugal and real innovation. Taking the COVID-19 vaccine as an example, he applauded the way the vaccine shots were exported contrary to our importing of the same previously.

With further elucidation he mentioned about the challenges faced by the young innovators that leads to 90% of the start-ups to fail within five years of inception and face the consequence of closure. It is not just about getting a billion unique data, but thoughts have to be on the challenges that arise by this.

Dr. Mohit Gambhir spoke ardently about the importance and the need for innovating. He emphasized that the innovation coming from the younger generation these days has upscaled it to the next level for the future. He also spoke about incubators supporting the younger generation, alongwith the hackathons to ignite the flame of innovations. He shared some numbers and thoughts on the initiatives of the Ministry of Education in conducting smart India hackathons, and also the evolution of the competition from 40,000 participants in the first year to 3.5 lakh participants in the fourth year, and expecting a million participants for the upcoming hackathons. He mentioned that the fifth edition is introducing a junior student track starting for grades 6-12, who would be part of the Open Innovation Model. Dr. Gambhir also talked about the tough, however fruitful  journey of the first Indian pandemic lockdown time, where he, the Ministry of Education and InnovatioCuris, under the guidance of Dr. V K Singh moved pole to pillar to transpire the IDEAthon (a COVID-19 themed hackathon).

It was an initiative where 10000 participants came together with innovative ideas to confront and cessation of the virus. The ideas were bestowed with accolades and many teams which impressed the jury were incubated by the Ministry of Education post the hackathon.

Dr. Gambhir then spoke about the TOYCATHON (an innovative toy making themed hackathon) and explained the procedure for its participation. The number of school student participants involved, greatly indicating the younger generation’s strength in the innovation space. He mentioned about the licensing and hand-holding that is still culminating between the participant school students and the toy making companies. These initiatives will have a higher impact in broadening the horizon of the school students as such actions would help the students during the time school students and when they have reached the college their ideas which are already funded thereby will strengthen the innovation ecosystem right from school.

Dr. Gambhir then spoke about the administrative work being done in the past 2-3 years, setting up innovation councils in higher education institutions across the country to bridge the gap in the design thinking, critical thinking and cognitive skills. He stated that this model would be used to launch school innovation councils and the ministry is ready to announce 10000 school innovation councils. He spoke about the teacher training in more than 25000 schools in India on design thinking, innovation, idea, the partnerships, technology, commerce, HR, sales, financing, boot camps, arranging business plan, like kind of people and activity. These teachers, if not completely trained, are at least aware of the basic concepts so that the student may not be discouraged in posing queries in the same. Dr. Gambhir spoke about mapping innovation and its role in the flourishing of enterprise ownership which brings to the way of channelising the brain tuning and resources to bring in more indigenous products made in the country.

Dr. Gambhir concluded his talk by speaking about the current actions, numbers in the IP space compared with the super powers like India and China. He mentioned about the challenges faced in IP due to poor documentation and the actions being taken from the rudimentary level to over turn these challenges.

The club meeting progressed with a panel discussion moderated by Sachin Gaur. The panel participants were Harmanjot Singh, Abhik Saha and Dinesh C Sharma.

Harmanjot Singh started his presentation where he introduced his accolades and work he is pursuing in his apps in healthcare and cyber bullying and women’s safety app and its success, shining his work before the Government of India. He mentioned that his work consists of three main ingredients:  creativity, knowledge, and perseverance, quoting Thomas Edison’s 1% inspiration and 99% perseverance. When asked about his change in life after developing these apps, he elucidated about his work life balance and its importance to motivate both segments.

After this, Abhik Saha, the second panelist started with his introduction and the way he progressed with his dream through the monotony of childhood and how he broke his shackles in setting up his own company, Origgon, a search engine. He shared his pull back from the investors terming it as a crazy idea going against a search engine giant. He then shared his long story short about his development of his idea from challenging times to his company closure due to unavailability of investors and funds. He still called it development due to the experience and excitement he received recharging him to scale to better opportunities. He mentioned that he is currently working with telecom companies, startups, etc; where they power search engine recommendations and other AI related technology backend, understanding big data. Abhik concludes that he would have ideally started his company at 15 contrary to 27 and expressed that he knew more about the jargon of the business world.

When asked about the future of online gaming in India, Abhik responded that it’s not just about gaming it’s about a completely different world that you can opt into, from your daily busy life, or whatever it does not matter in the game you can choose what character they want to be as well as the role they want to play. Also meet other people and do something together making that part of gaming so interesting, or makes the full potential of the internet in a completely different environment or scenario, also bringing those angles from the gaming to other environments like education and technology and learning.

Next, the award winning journalist, Dinesh C.Sharma took over and talked about his journey of journalism in 1984 about scientific institutions paving the way for science journalism. He mentioned his book on the Arctic where he was at the ground zero of climate change, spending time as an icebreaker. He mentioned that he broadly wrote on environment and medicine. When asked about his opinion on communication, he talked about the way communication has evolved and the change in the internet speed, the evolution of the technology infrastructure. He states that his reason to write the book. “Indian innovation: not jugaad” is first, many innovations have touched the lives of people and needed documentation, and secondly whenever there’s a discussion about Indian innovation, the word “Jugaad” comes into picture most of the time creating a wrong impression and hence wanted to shrug off the thoughts on Indian innovation.

He states that frugal innovation is not jugaad, but a quick transient act for correction and he wanted that impression to change through this book. He gives an example of the egg market in India and how uniform pricing helped egg availability all over India. He spoke about the future trends in India stating that when innovated, it finds use cases all along and not just for the length of the time it was made. He mentioned that his favorite innovation from his book is the ticketing system and the very thought of computerizing and making it, accessible to people you could book any ticket anywhere, anytime and those are that kind of revolutionary then that changed the number of people who travel by Indian railways in a year is humongous and the other innovation being the digitisation of land records. His healthcare specific favorite innovation was the set of ideas which led to making medicines and vaccines affordable to India. Dinesh mentioned that the younger generation needs mentoring from the experienced lot and that every innovation is based on a context and processed may be cultural specific, technology can only be a support and the problem solving needs innovations.

Dr. Gambhir concurred with Dinesh about the problem solving innovations and also carefully highlights the peer pressure scenarios that may arise due to this.

Dr. V.K.Singh concluded the meeting by sharing his experience on generational awareness and the perspective of life changing drastically as time passes and technology strides over power the way of living. His advice to the younger generation is to analyze failure rather than success.

Compiled by: “Clarion Smith Kodamanchili”

The post Young Innovators appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.

RetailIO, connecting Pharmacies and Wholesalers, successfully conducted Drone deliveries in Karnataka’s Gauribidanur in collaboration with healthcare autonomous drone logistics company Redwing Labs.

The pilot was focused on delivering critical lifesaving medicines to hospitals in under 10 mins maintaining the cold chain and all the norms, the team conducted 4 trips with different product mixes. The Pilot took place between Gauribidanur and Hossur Primary Healthcare center (PHC) in Chickkaballapur district using a Hybrid VTOL drone with Payload capacity of upto 2 kgs. With an average speed of 90 kmph the drone covered an ariel distance of ~10km under 8 mins.

Harsh Parekh – Co founder, API holdings stated – “We believe autonomous drone systems are the future and will help the ecosystem get better. This is the future and we will continue to focus on such kind of innovations”

Additionally states” The VTOL drone was used in the demonstration and is 100% electric. Drone-based delivery networks could result in over 90% reduction in carbon emissions compared to using vans and cars”

Mithil Jain – CEO, RetailIO 1P said – “the vision to integrate Drones in the healthcare ecosystem is a critical step towards efficient medicine delivery. We feel Autonomous drones at scale would bring in a lot of disruption in healthcare delivery. With an exceptional response time, life-saving medicines can be delivered at lightning speeds. The success of the pilot opens up tremendous opportunities to provide exceptional service and healthcare supplies to the remotest part of the country.”

This trial opens up a plethora of opportunities in improving healthcare delivery for multiple stakeholders, this together with numerous such applications has tremendous potential to augment the entire ecosystem.

Limited access is one of the most serious concerns in Indian healthcare. For every 10,000 people, India has only ~9 doctors, compared to 26 and 20 doctors per 10,000 people in the US and China respectively. In rural areas, only 4 doctors are available for every 10,000 people. As a result, only 11 out of 29 states in India meet the WHO recommendation of 1:1000 doctor to population ratio and 10 Indian states face shortage of doctors at a primary care level.

Source: https://www.expresscomputer.in/industries/healthcare/retailio-conducts-successful-pilot-of-drone-based-medicine-delivery/83157/

The post RetailIO conducts successful Pilot of Drone based Medicine Delivery appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.

FinTech startup LegalPay has rolled out an interim finance healthcare-focused fund for retail investors. The fund will be available to those willing to invest a minimum of Rs 10,000 (approximately $134) for every opportunity, in asset-backed legal and debt financing asset classes. The report notes that interim finance is a super short-term financing, which allows for an insolvent company to remain operational even while undergoing the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process.

LegalPay’s work targets the mid-market companies that have been undergoing insolvencies, and it competes with restructuring firms.The New Delhi-based company has said the alternative investments in legal and debt asset classes doesn’t go along with capital markets and gives more than 20% to 30% pre-tax IRRs of monthly disbursements.

Kundan Shahi, founder and CEO of LegalPay, said the company “democratizes investments through extensive use of technology and data.” “We want to make the use of alternative investments mainstream for retail Indian investors like the ultra-rich does,” Shahi continued. “We have a unique ability to engage in product innovation consistently and set benchmarks for wealth generation in India.”

In other FinTech news, India-based firm Slice has plans to hire 800 new employees next year. That will include canvassing its operations, design, product and engineering departments.

Founder and CEO Rajan Bajaj said the idea was to “constantly” look for new talent, whether it’s people just out of school or experienced professionals “who relate to our product and are equally enthusiastic about creating the future of payments.”

PYMNTS reported that there will be a special focus on building and growing the product, operations, design and engineering teams. The new hires will be brought in to work with the flagship card product and new United Payments Interface (UPI) integration.

Source: Indian FinTech LegalPay Creates Healthcare Fund | PYMNTS.com

The post Indian FinTech LegalPay Creates Healthcare Fund for Retail Investors appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.

OnePlus India has rolled out a series of initiatives as part of its ongoing mental health and wellness campaign.The programmes include sessions with experts on healthy eating and emotional well-being, meditation sessions on practicing mindfulness, as well as yoga sessions with cardio-based benefits and building energy.

“We are also planning webinars with industry experts on creating greater awareness of our personal investment towards mental health. we look forward to engaging with our employees through ‘daily mindfulness challenge’ contests and fun activities centred on this theme in order to build greater community awareness,” Vikram Kapur, director of HR department, OnePlus India.

The curated mental health sessions are an extension of the company’s current series of wellness initiatives that aim to support and aid employee wellness and help maintain a positive work environment.

The firm has also introduced free physical fitness and yoga sessions along with mental health counselling and therapy sessions that are complemented by diet consultations, to ensure that employees’ mental and physical health is taken care of, and they are provided with adequate stress-relief mechanisms. Employees also get special ‘pitstop’ leaves where teams come together to take a day off without the guilt or burden of the rest of the team working.

OnePlus India currently has more than 500 employees working from its Bengaluru and Hyderabad offices. During the first half of 2021, it witnessed over 40% y-o-y increase in its workforce growth in India, accounting for both direct and indirect jobs, including its service and retail sectors.

The company has also set up a new camera lab at its R&D facility, which has seen dedicated contributions from the local team of engineers who have been recruited to work full time at the camera lab. This team of engineers in India have also been working closely with global R&D teams as well as other global stakeholders to build camera innovations and contribute significantly towards the OnePlus Nord 2 5G, the most recent addition to the Nord line-up of smartphones.

“As part of our expansion efforts, our biggest upcoming project is the OnePlus Experience Store in Bengaluru which will be the largest OnePlus Experience Store globally. Here, we are looking to build a team of more than 50 dedicated towards running operations for the massive store,” said Kapur.

Source:https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/oneplus-india-rolls-out-slew-of-initiatives-on-mental-health/articleshow/87888432.cms

The post OnePlus India rolls out slew of initiatives on mental health appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.

Global angel network firm Agility Ventures has launched an INR 450 Cr ($60 Mn) angel fund after receiving approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI). Agility Ventures is looking to deploy the entire corpus of the fund in the next four years by investing more than INR 75 Cr across 50 startups each year. The Agility Ventures network typically invests in startups in the fields of education, technology, healthcare, ecommerce, automobiles, electric vehicles, robotics, agritech and manufacturing among others.

The network currently has over 1500 angel investors as members and is looking at increasing this number to 4000 by the end of the year. Apart from its current interest areas, it will also be looking to invest in fintech, cybersecurity and crypto startups.

“After launching Fluid Ventures (a D2C focused VC fund) last year, this is exactly the kind of fuel needed to roll-out our plans for 2022. After having invested in five companies through Fluid Ventures, ambitious about deploying INR 75 crore this year through Agility Ventures angel fund,” said Dhianu Das, cofounder of Agility Ventures. 

about $6.2 Bn had been raised by 62 funds across categories (VC, Debt, CVC, Micro VCs) to back the rising Indian startup economy last year. Of these 62 funds, nine are Corporate Venture Capital funds (or CVCs) and 12 are Micro VCs. 

“The interesting thing about raising the kind of angel fund that has been approved by SEBI is that it is sector-agnostic and does not limit itself to co-investments. This model also simplifies the financing process without changing the core style of the angel network. In fact, it adds to the pre-existing angel investor’s style of financing,” said  Prashant Narang, cofounder of Agility Ventures.

Source: https://inc42.com/buzz/angel-network-agility-ventures-launches-inr-450-cr-fund/

The post Angel Network Agility Ventures Launches Sector-Agnostic INR 450 Cr Fund appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.

Alkem Laboratories Ltd. (Alkem) hereby announces to launch a unique patented technology for the treatment of Diabetic Foot Ulcer (DFU) in India. The solution would be based on disruptive 4D Bioprinting technology, which would be used to treat deep, non-healing chronic wounds and is expected to be launched in the Indian market in the latter half of 2022 post regulatory approval.

This advanced technology for DFU management has a high scope of preventing amputations in diabetic patients. This technology will be available at affordable rates to Indian patients at a time when there is no definitive treatment for DFU in India.

India currently has approximately 77 mn diabetes patients, the second highest in the world. A diabetic foot ulcer is one of the most significant and devastating complications of diabetes and is defined as a foot affected by ulceration that is associated with neuropathy and/or peripheral arterial disease of the lower limb in a patient with diabetes.Approximately, 12-15% with diabetes suffer from DFU at least once in a lifetime. 5-24% of them will finally lead to limb amputation within 6-18 months after the first evaluation. The risk of foot ulceration and limb amputation increases with age and the duration of diabetes.

Alkem has collaborated with Rokit Healthcare Inc. to commercialize the technology in India to help reduce amputation amongst DFU patients considering the negative impact of amputation on a patient’s quality of life and the associated economic burden on the healthcare system.

Sandeep Singh, Managing Director, Alkem Laboratories Ltd. , stated, “In India, Diabetes is one of the major healthcare challenges. The challenge in itself is so huge that diabetic foot ulcers often get ignored. Approximately 1 lac people have to undergo amputation every year and compromise on their quality of life. To address the problem, Alkem has collaborated with Rokit Healthcare Inc., a global regenerative solutions company, to bring out novel solutions for the management of diabetic foot ulcers.”

Adding further, Sandeep asserted, “Alkem, over the years, has always been at the forefront in delivering high-quality patient care, through its innovation and patient-centric initiatives.”

Established in 1973 and headquartered in Mumbai, Alkem (NSE: ALKEM, BSE: 539523) is a leading Indian pharmaceutical company with global operations, engaged in the development, manufacture, and sale of pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products. The Company produces branded generics, generic drugs, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), and nutraceuticals, which it markets in India and International markets. With a portfolio of more than 800 brands in India, Alkem is ranked the fifth largest pharmaceutical company in India in terms of domestic sales (Source: IQVIA March 2021). The Company also has presence in more than 40 international markets, with the United States being its key focus market.

Source:https://theprint.in/ani-press-releases/alkem-laboratories-ltd-to-launch-state-of-the-art-technology-for-diabetic-foot-ulcer-management-for-the-first-time-in-india/801261/

The post Alkem Laboratories Ltd. to launch State of the Art Technology for Diabetic Foot Ulcer Management for the first time in India appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.