Bengaluru Tech Summit 2020: Smart Bio Awards announced

The government of Karnataka on Saturday concluded the three-day Bengaluru Tech Summit with the announcement of the Smart Bio Awards(SBA) 2020.

'Today’s SmartBio Award will inspire organizations to set the bar high for and become global companies in the years to come. The presence of world-class bio incubators and programs like Elevate Idea2Poc, and Karnataka Startup Advancement Programme BIO 50 (KSAP Bio50) has supported many of these startups in their initial years by providing the much needed scientific infrastructure, seed funds, and mentorship," Dr. C.N. Ashwath Narayan, Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka and Minister for IT, BT and S&T said

In the 23rd edition of the BTS, SBA was conferred to start-ups and institutes in five different categories.

The Fibroheal Woundcare Private Limited, a healthcare biotech startup won the startup of the year, for developing revolutionary biomaterial-based wound healing products.

Innovator of the year went to Nibedit Dey, Founder & CEO of Ibrum Technologies. He is developing a novel point-of-care pneumonia screening device for early detection of health issues and save the lives of the babies.

Kavitha Iyer Rodrigues, co-founder & CEO of Zumutor Biologics Pvt Ltd won the women entrepreneur of the year. Her company is developing novel immune-oncotherapeutics leveraging on proprietary antibody engineering platform to harness the body’s immune system to generate antibodies against cancerous tumors.

There was a special award for working on products related to Covid-19 detection and diagnosis. ShanMukha Innovations Pvt Ltd won this category for developing 100% safe Mobile Infection Testing and Reporting (MITR) Labs to provide end-to-end RT-PCR testing kits, not just for coronavirus and also other infectious diseases.

The fifth and final best social enterprise award went to Jalodbust for working on the problems of manual scavenging and exposure of sanitation workers to disease, drudgery, and social ignominy.

Left to right-- Meena Nagaraj, Dr CN Ashwath Narayan, and EV Ramana Reddy

During the three-day event, BTS, which was conducted under the chairmen and members of the three Vision Groups on IT, Biotech, and Start-ups, saw the participation of 731 foreign delegates from 25 countries.

Also, the state government signed eight MoUs and Intentions for Collaboration with GIA (Global Innovation Alliance) partner institutions from Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, UK, and the USA-- to work on areas such as skilling, R&D, developing networks in the ecosystem, life science and biotechnology, healthcare, aerospace and defense, education, sports economy, and automotive.

And, more than 146 startups showcased innovation in IT, electronics, IoT, healthcare, Medtech, Agritech, Fintech, Edtech, and mobility sectors at the BTS 2020.

The government earlier in the event released the Karnataka BioEconomy Report (KBER) 2020. It aims to reach the $50 billion in exports from biotech companies by 2025.

"Bengaluru has always taken charge to lead the transformation of India with innovation, science, and technology. The theme of this year’s summit was 'Next is Now' building on the success of our event last year. Innovation, especially in leveraging disruptive technologies, is the need of the hour. Through the sessions, panels, presentations, knowledge café, etc., we have created a larger platform for the exchange of knowledge and ideas," Dr. C.N. Ashwath Narayan noted.

The 24th edition of the Bengaluru Tech Summit is scheduled for November (18-20), 2021.

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