BackEVA to help incubate life sciences, healthcare start-ups
New Escape Velocity Accelerator, which will have a corpus of `1 crore for the first year, will provide infrastructure, mentorship and funding
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Bangalore: Entrepreneurs and executives led by biotech professor Ram Subramanian, business incubator Evoma founder Ashok Vohra, and former Indian Institute of Science professor Swami Manohar are launching a new accelerator programme that will annually incubate about eight to 10 start-ups operating in the life sciences and healthcare space.
The new Escape Velocity Accelerator (EVA), which will have a corpus of at least ₹ 1 crore for the first year, will assist early-stage companies and provide these start-ups infrastructure, mentorship and funding, as and when required.
In exchange, EVA will take up equity of less than 10% in these start-ups; the intellectual property ownership will remain with the start-up founders.
“We need more such enablers in the (start-up) ecosystem," said Manohar, who founded PicoPeta Simputers Pvt. Ltd that built what is generally regarded as India’s first tablet computer. “We are seeing so many opportunities that we need the ecosystem to grow. The focus is very much on early-stage mentoring for these companies across these domains."
Other founding members of the accelerator include Anand Anandkumar, founder and chief executive officer of drug discovery firm Bugworks; Shrikumar Suryanarayan, former head of R&D at Biocon Ltd; and Ricky Bedi, CEO of healthcare product firm Telerad Tech Pvt. Ltd.
Unlike a typical accelerator programme, which usually lasts for a period of four-six months, companies incubated by EVA will have a gestation period of 12-18 months. EVA plans to enrol firms based on whether the founders are free to mentor.
“Unlike typical other accelerators, you can’t keep these companies for three-four months, give them ₹ 5 lakh and say, we are accelerating you. It won’t work like that here," Anandkumar of Bugworks said. “The number game will be completely different...we will function more like an asset management company."
The accelerator, however, will not incubate companies from the biopharma space.
Anandkumar clarified that not all start-ups will receive funding; only those early-stage firms in urgent need of resources could receive funding up to ₹ 25 lakh a year. “We will invest up to ₹ 25 lakh on a case-to-case basis, depending on whether they need funding."
Currently, the accelerator is working with three start-ups and expects these to move to execution mode in the next three-six months, thus freeing up mentors for newer companies that will come on board.
The three start-ups are SKL Medtech Pvt. Ltd, Lucep and Bugworks.
EVA is currently also in talks with a number of angel investors to participate in this venture.
Primarily focused on start-ups in Bangalore, EVA said that it is also in talks with start-ups based elsewhere in India.
Besides India, EVA also has an office in Tokyo and Singapore, and will shortly set up offices in the US.
“Since we already have a presence in Japan, Singapore and very shortly in the US, we want to figure out a way to get these start-ups to international markets," said Anandkumar. “While India is an important market, we cannot take the approach that this is only about affordable innovation, bottom-of-the-pyramid for India. Then the problem is you’re shutting out the rest of the global markets."
EVA’s other partners on this programme include C-Camp, Swami Manohar’s Jed-I engineering programme, Novojuris, ESCO and IIT-Madras. Ashok Vohra’s Evoma will provide the office space in Bangalore.
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