Microsoft Accelerator, a global programme to empower start-ups has teamed up with Accenture Ventures to invest in growth-stage companies including those providing Blockchain and other technology platforms for the pharma and healthcare sectors. These include two Bengaluru-based companies KrypC and Clonect.
While KrypC helps accelerates use of Blockchain-based applications for pharma and healthcare companies, Clonect provides the much-needed support on governance, risk and compliance (GRC), goods and services tax (GST) among other finance IT solutions needs.
“Our KrypC platform helps enterprises to achieve their Blockchain dream. It is easy to develop and deploy a Blockchain application. We have all the technology that a business should consider”, said Ravi Jagannathan, managing director and CEO, KrypC Technologies.
Technically it is not easy to develop a Blockchain technology But we have the expertise and KrypC platform takes care of all that is required to make a Blockchain application work in a real-time environment. There are also various value-added services which are created for sectors including pharma and healthcare. It is easily customisable as we have done 32 cases including healthcare for patient health records, said Jagannathan.
Specific to pharma and healthcare, quality standards in supply chain management are a challenge. This is because some drugs need to be transported in controlled environment and Blockchain provides this ability to enable transparency of how a medicine is carried. The US FDA regulation Drug Supply Chain Security Act mandates all companies to comply with this by 2020. Now our Blockchain technology will be handy to pharma and related logistic companies which include suppliers of raw materials, distributors and hospitals. Once the regulation is enforced, every medicine manufactured and distributed will go through the Blockchain platform. Currently, we get only information on the expiry date and batch number, he said.
“Going forward, every detail on distribution channels including its handling process will be recorded from point-to-point. Therefore, Blockchain brings in foundational changes in the society and in 2018, these will get implemented with multiple enterprises sharing the data and there is tremendous return on investment. We were able to adopt the Microsoft expertise in Blockchain via its Azure platform,” stated Jagannathan.
According to Shailesh Agrawal, co-founder, Clonect Solutions has rolled out the GRC and GST compliance software used by over 60 companies including healthcare and pharma.
Microsoft has the platform technologies and Accenture has the solutions. The partnership will now bolster growth stage companies to boost their enterprise readiness, devise go-to-market strategies and help deploy solutions in both domestic and global markets. It will support the Start-up India and Digital India programmes too, said Bala Girisaballa, managing director, Microsoft Accelerator.
The day-long Microsoft Accelerator flagship event, ThinkNext 2018 in Bengaluru was attended by 400 business and industry leaders, start-ups and venture capitalistsa, and highlighted the support to be extended to companies specialising in artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, augmented/virtual reality, Blockchain, Big Data among others.