EETimes list of emerging start-ups

EETimes list of emerging start-ups includes none from India- an indication of our relative strengths in this sector. Few like semiindia are focussed in India. Our start-ups are quick to track entrepreneurial opportunities but low in resources & commitment to generate/ capture/deliver value. See article `value proposition in knowledge economy'.

Relisys Medical Devices

A firm promoted by Dr Krishan Reddy manufacturing Stents, Catheters etc crossed a major mile stone with receipt of FDA approval. This is the dream project of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, H.E. The President of India who was responsible for inventing the first indigenous Coronary Stent "Kalam-Raju Stent", India's first indigenously developed stent in the year 1998. This first Coil stent was marketed by Relisys Medical Devices Ltd. This was the first indigenously developed Stent by DRDO and CARE Group.The product was withdrawn in 2001 as coil stents were phased out world wide. Advanced version of the company's Drug-Eluting Stent (DES) has been designed to eliminate the existing drawbacks of the currently available polymer coated Drug-Eluting Stent. Relisys' new DES consists of a Cobalt-Chromium Stent, coated with a porous carbon/carbon composite nano-structured matrix containing the active drug. The coating was developed and provided by Blue Membranes, the Germany based company in material and surface engineering. The coating eliminates the use of polymers thus completely reducing tissue inflammation and reaction.The animal trials for this version of advanced DES were recently completed at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, Washington D.C.Clinical trial were carried out at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, Cardio-Thoracic Centre, Military Hospital, Pune, and CARE Hospitals, Hyderabad.

National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS)

The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Bangalore is part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and is located in Bangalore. The mandate of NCBS is basic research in the frontier areas of biology and in the interface between biology and the physical sciences.

The founder of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Homi Bhabha, looked upon the Institute not merely as a place for doing good physics but as an instrument for growing science and scientific culture in India. TIFR’s research activities in physics, mathematics, biology and other areas are well known. Somewhat less known is the fact that it has helped to create a number of other institutions. In the last 15 years alone,TIFR has directly or indirectly catalyzed the formation of six other institutions, the National Centre for Software Technology (NCST, Mumbai and Bangalore), the Society for Applied Microwave Engineering and Electronic Research (SAMEER, Mumbai and Chennai), the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (Pune), the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (Mumbai), the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (Pune) and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (Bangalore). The last three in the above list have been set up directly under the umbrella of TIFR and are governed by its Council of Management.

Bala Krishnamurthy-Robotics expert

The robotic industry’s premier honor, the Engelberger Robotics Awards, were presented to four leaders at the 38th International Symposium on Robotics, June 13, during the International Robots & Vision Show in Rosemont (Chicago), Illinois. One of the awardees is Bala Krishnamurthy and she is the first female recipient of an Engelberger Robotics Award.For over 25 years, Bala Krishnamurthy has been designing and developing a wide range of software in programming languages, networked systems, and related technologies which have contributed to the growth of robotics. In 1997 Krishnamurthy founded Aeolean Inc., a company specializing in the design of custom software solutions for high-tech applications, and serves the company as CEO.

Advinus Therapeutics

Tata's wanted to reenter pharma and their first major investment was in Advinus Therapeutics Pvt. ltd, a start-up with focus on drug discovery. The brain behind the venture is Rashmi Barbhaiya. Developing novel therapies for neglected diseases such as Leshmaniasis, dengue fever, tuberculosis, leprosy and malaria is one of its priority area. As big drug companies shut down some research facilities in the U.S. and other rich countries, labs in India and China are increasingly picking up the slack. Eli Lilly & Co., Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline PLC all have outsourced chemistry work to Indian firms.

CSI news letter with Innovation as theme

Anuradha, working at Infosys, running innovation management program sent me link to CSI news letter with several interesting articles on Innovation. Useful insights from IT community on Innovation:
http://www.csi-pune.org/c/document_library/get_file?folderId=8&name=June-July+2007+Newsletter.pdf

CHOIS gets the first licensee

Sky n Land, the first Licensee company for CHOIS (Converged Home and Office Interactive Services) Technology, has appointed its first CHOIS Franchisee in Mangalore city. The Franchisee, Access Online, will be responsible for providing each home with a 100 Mb Ethernet fibre connection. The CHOIS Franchisee will also be providing comprehensive services for CHOISpad and CHOISpc at each home, through a CHOIS Head-end. Sky n Land is currently in process of appointing additional Franchisees in different regions in India and Abroad. This will trigger off the era for the Next Generation Video Internet and Smart Homes. CHOIS Technology is an end-to-end technology for enabling Next Generation Video Internet Services. This pioneering technology has been invented by Innomedia Technologies, Bangalore, a technology innovation company of the Reliance Communications, Mumbai. Sky n Land, Mumbai, a company promoted by pan-IITians, was appointed as the first Licensee in May 2007.

Interested -contact "Mohan Tambe"

Milagrow Business and Knowledge Solutions

Rajeev Karwal's Milagrow offers, Milagrow Business and Knowledge Solutions, which essentially hand-hold small businesses by offering them professional management services, and if needed, take up sweat equity or strategic stakes in some of the ventures. Rajeev earlier worked LG, Philips, Electrolux, and Reliance. SMEs planning going global can contact him ; rk@milagrow.in

Sewage treatment plant at Worli, Mumbai

Sewage treatment is a difficult urban problem, is expensive and often unsatisfactorily delivered especially in India. Effective but simple technology has been developed by IITB (Prof.HSShankar, ChE Dept along with his students) that uses the ‘green’ Soil Bio-Technology (SBT). The Soil bio-Technology uses a carefully prepared and maintained soil bed as a highly aerated reactor containing bio-organisms for (i) filtering the suspended matter and its bioconversion to odourless bio-fertilizer, (ii) converting dissolved organics by adsorptionand oxidation/bioconversion, and (iii) oxidizing the dissolved inorganic substances leading to precipitation and bioconversion. The basic control apparently is to manage the soil chemistry with appropriate mineral based additives to maintain a near neutral pH andto keep it highly porous for good aeration. The root systems of the plants on the bed helpin keeping the soil porous and have a biotic relationship with the organisms.

m-cam.com

David E. Martin, is the founding CEO of M·CAM, Inc., dealing with intellectual property-based financial risk management. M·CAM developed the Technology and Vendor Qualification Programs™ to assist professionals involved in procurement efforts to acquire specific technologies for their organizations. The products provide critical assessment information on the validity of the proposed technology to be procured vis-á-vis the state-of-the-art within a specific technology sector. M·CAM Vendor Verification Certifications™ provide clients with an ability to verify whether or not a vendor/supplier of a technology actually has the legal right to the technology being procured.M·TRACE™ services consist of proprietary research analyses developed by M·CAM to illuminate knowledge-asset proliferation threats posed by proposed, current, or former employees of a client company. And several more path breaking services in IP- read on.

Fab Lab

Fablab is basically a collection of set of computerized high-tech tools, which can be used to fabricate instruments of any utility and configuration. A place that empowers innovators to make almost anything. Fablabs have been developed by Centre of Bits and Atoms of Masssachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT), USA. One such a lab exists at Vigyan Ashram, Pune finded by MIT at a cost of $200,000/-. VA trains school drop outs to use FABLAB equipments. The students undergo a diploma course of one year where they work in different streams of engineering and get trained in various fields. Engineers at the Ashram train these students. R&D takes place at the Fablab where the students are asked to work on a project of their choice using the Fablab equipments. Interested- read on:

Here are background links on fab labs:

articles:

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060821/full/442862a.html

(copy at http://cba.mit.edu/~neilg/dist/nature.pdf) http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3786368 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2005-11-06-fab-lab_x.htm interviews:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2005/Nov/hour1_111105.html http://audio.theworld.org/wma/2005/09207.wma

book:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931027_mz005.htm

talks and presentations:

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=n_gershenfeld http://cba.mit.edu/events/06.06.ZA/symposium.html http://cba.mit.edu/~neilg/dist/fab.pdf

CBA:

http://cba.mit.edu/events/06.10.review/

http://cba.mit.edu/docs/06.09.NSF/

demos:

http://cba.mit.edu/~neilg/demos

hardware:

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/fab/inv.html

software:

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/fab/

videoconference:

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/content/processes/video/index.html

First Internation Inventions Fair of the Middle East‎

Kuwait Science Club, under the patronage of International Exhibition of Inventions, New Techniques and Products of Geneva, is organizing the First International Invention Fair of the Middle East (IIFME) from the 23rd to the 26th of October 2007, In Kuwait City. Contact person:

Eyad J. Al-Kharafi

Chairman of Directors

Head of High Organizing Committee

Kuwait Science Club*

P.O. Box 23259 SAFAT*

13093 Kuwait*

Tel.: +965- 539 65 61/2/4/8*

Fax: +965-5396567*

Http://www.iifme.com

E-mail: er@iifme.com

President speaks at Maruti

Hon.Presidents speech at Maruti is one of the most logically structured talk I have come across. Maruti is no 2 in productivity and road map to become no 1 includes a heavy dose of investment in R&D. And Maruti is not short of cash, as the Hon.President pointed out - they had Rs1500 crore profit in 2006-7. Will they bite the bullet and be known as innovators in automobiles. It probably depends on the strategic intent of owners as exhibited by Hyundai a decade back with much smaller base of market and resources.

Assocham conference on Automation and Robotics

Assocham conference on Automation and Robotics held on 26th May brought together several experts working in this field. Systemantics based in Bangalore is one of the few Indian firms in this field, offering Pick and Place robots, Dr Jagannath Raju is Director of this firm. Rajesh Ananthakrishnan of IITB promoted Reflex Technologies Pvt Ltd ,Mumbai offering custom based automation and robotics projects. Much more activity is evident on research front with Prof Amarnath from IIT Mumbai, Prof Susmit Sen from IIT Kanpur, Dr SK Saha from IIT Delhi and Prof K Madhava Krishna from IIIT Hyderabad grooming several young students in this discipline. Anuj Sehgal is man behind India's only NGO in this field `Intelligent Unmanned Robotics Society'. Defence is a major player with CAIR doing pioneering work.

Motilal Oswal Venture Capital Advisors Private Limited (MOVCAPL)

Motilal Oswal Venture Capital Advisors Private Limited (MOVCAPL) , a subsidiary of Mumbai-based Motilal Oswal Financial Services, is investing in existing SMES. This private equity fund recently raised $42 million of a proposed $100 million. The deal size will be around $5 million . Read the interview at India Knowledge Wharton.

2007 Taipei International Invention Show and Technomart

Invitation received from Thomas Chang, Director,Taipei World Tradee Centre, Mumabai, inviting participation by Indian Innovators in the 2007 Taipei International Invention Show and Technomart to be held from September 27 to September 30 2007.

Inventors from across the world will use this venue to show their latest and most exciting breakthroughs for the innovation and research in the potential industries like technology, High Technology, Fiber Optics, Machinery, Construction, Safety Equipment, Environmental Protection, Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare, Transport and Communications, Household Electronic Appliances, Hardware, Agriculture, Food, Textiles, and Optoelectronics, Precision Machinery, Materials and Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Technology and much more.
Innovators interested in participation can contact me or call TWTC at 022- 22163074-77.

School in a Box

`School in a Box' is a software product developed by start-up, Pefect future, New delhi, promoted by Microsoft engr Tarun Anad. At Rs 15/- this may find wide acceptance among schools- another innovation for Bottom Of the Pyramid market from Inda. New york times carrys a story on the start-up.

Matsushita Buys India's Anchor

Forbes reports that Matsushita Electric Works, a subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. had bought 80% of leading Indian electrical equipment maker Anchor from the Mumbai-based Shah family for $480 million. The deal is important for several reasons:

1. Anchor manufactures simple products like electric switches, though Matsushita markets electrical wiring and related items in Japan, how it fares in India selling such a low unit products remain to be seen.

2. The products Anchor makes in India were once reserved for small scale industries and Anchor is credited with creating brands in an otherwise commodity market.

3. Will Matsushita ever be able to sell these low unit price products under its own name? Despite its name and resources , success in India eluded this Japanese top of the mind recall brand owner. National and Panasonic once dominated Indian grey market which disappeared with liberalisation and globalisation.

4. The deal is indicative of strengths of small scale industries that focused on design innovations and may be despair of Japanese firms who lost the race to Koreans in India .

Sunil Shaunak

Fortune's list of 24 top innovators include Sunil Shaunak , Professor of infectious diseases, London University's Imperial College, developing medicines for a fraction of what Big Pharma spends. His small biotech, PolyTherics, created a new hepatitis C medicine, which will undergo final testing this year. License was granted to Shanta biotechnics, a price warrior credited to bringing down prices of vaccines to a fraction in India.

Diaonics Automation

Diaonics Automation is a small unit promoted by design engineer Prashant. It has successfully developed wireless fire alarm, smoke/ heat detector etc. Detector has a monitoring LED that operates about every 16 seconds per cycle (flash) during stand-by status. When there is smoke, detector will issue fire signal after 16 consecutive times of confirmation on every 0.3 seconds. If any dust causes flashing or in consecutive signal, it will back to normal status after 32 confirmations.