Fifteen startups and four student teams win C-CAMP bio entrepreneurship prizes in Mysuru

What happened?

Fifteen young bioscience startups and four student teams have been named the winners of India's ninth National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition, sharing a prize pool worth more than 35 crore rupees.

The awards, announced on Saturday in Mysuru by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), showcase the next wave of local innovations aimed at solving deep-seated problems in healthcare, farming, and the environment.

Who is involved?

The scale of the competition reflects a growing national interest in the life sciences. Organisers received more than 3,200 registrations from 34 states and union territories across India. Notably, women made up 40 per cent of this year's applicant pool, pointing to a diversifying landscape of scientific entrepreneurship.

The 15 winning startups secured a combined total of Rs 35 crore in cash prizes to help commercialise their technologies. Meanwhile, the four student-led teams took home Rs 4 lakh in cash prizes to push their academic projects closer to the market.

Run in collaboration with the government’s Department of IT, BT, S&T, the annual competition is designed to identify and support early-stage ideas that might otherwise struggle to find funding. For many of these young teams, the cash injection is a crucial lifeline to transition from laboratory experiments to real-world deployment.

What happens next?

The ceremony also served as a platform to discuss the future of the country's wider biotechnology sector. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the executive chairperson of Biocon Limited, highlighted the immense potential of integrating new technologies with biological research.

"With AI and deep tech unlocking biology’s complexity, we have a good understanding of the science," Shaw said during the event. However, she warned that scientific breakthrough is only half the battle. The real challenge now lies in translating that knowledge into viable, large-scale enterprises.

"We need to find a way to scale the business. This will build a strong economy for India and lift the country’s bioeconomy from $195Bn to $2.6 trillion by 2047," Shaw added. The ambition is high, but the organisers believe events like this competition are essential to laying the groundwork. By offering both financial backing and mentorship, the initiative aims to turn academic promise into a pillar of India's future economic growth.