The Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani Hyderabad Campus which developed a Point of Care (POC) device for rapid detection of antibiotic sensitivity of pathogenic organisms found in human urine in cases of Urinary Tract Infection has won the 6th edition of the Biotechnology Entrepreneurship Student Team (BEST) which is ABLE’s DBT supported event.

The sixth edition saw 120 student teams across India vying for top honours with 20 of them converging to Bengaluru, the Biotech Capital of India for the finals.

Two separate teams from the Institute of Chemical Technology won the two second prizes. A combo-team from Central University of Gujarat and IIT Bombay and another team from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, bagged the two third prizes.

The annual event is a big hit among B.E./B.Tech postgraduate and doctoral life sciences students as it triggers their inherent entrepreneurial talent. The budding entrepreneurs are trained over three days on various aspects of creating and running start-ups.

According to Dr P M Murali, President, Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE) said, for the past five years young groups have successfully emerged as entrepreneurs.  Each year the quality of presentations and new ideas emerging are very encouraging and we feel the $ 100 billion by 2025 target set by the industry is on track. This year some of the ideas leveraging the strengths of Biology and electronics were very evident and students are now offering solutions using a multi-disciplinary approach.”

“BEST is a unique pan India annual event that encourages students to think innovative solutions to address important problems. DBT initiated the programme in 2009 and over the past 6 years and six start-ups have been formed by teams who have been BEST winners or participants. The government of India has allocated funds to support start-ups and programmes like BEST help in identifying them, said Dr. K Vijay Raghavan, secretary DBT & DST, Government of India.

At the event Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, CMD, Biocon who gave away the awards,  in her keynote on ‘Enabling an Efficient & Effective research & development ecosystem in India’ recommended a close working between the industry, government and academia to nurture innovation.