REWARDING INNOVATION
The practice of awarding prizes to spur innovation
is now making its way to India. Innovators are being rewarded for tackling
challenges in areas like space exploration, healthcare and education,
Nishant Kumar does not mince words when talking
about his long-term vision: “We want to be the Google of the medical devices
industry .“
This 29-year-old engineer founded Embryyo
Technologies in Pune and immediately set to work on an innovative way of
funding it.He did not go to an investor for money . No one would have been
interested in him now, as he was setting up an R&D lab without revenue
models. Within a year of its formation, Kumar's company has $300,000 in the
bag.
His funders are the Tata Trust, the Gates
Foundation and the Department of Biotechnology . Embryyo got $230,000 from the
Gates Foundation alone, as the initial part of grants for solving pressing
problems of the society. One grant is for figuring out ways of persuading
tuberculosis patients to adhere to their drug regimen. The second award, given
two weeks ago, was to figure out the brain weight of a just-born baby
accurately .Both projects are ideas, but Embryyo stands to gain more than $1
million if they come to fruition in the next two years.
Awarding prizes to spur innovation is a
deeply-rooted practice in the US, and it is now making its way to India. The TB
adherence programme is funded by the Gates Foundation and USAID, and managed by
the business incubator IKP Knowledge Park in Hyderabad. IKP coordinates two
prizes, one on TB adherence another on different healthcare problems, the
second funded by Gates Foundation. A few angel investors and technology
industry veterans are trying to develop another prize, tentatively named the
iPrize, as a way of bringing innovation to government contracts. “Our real goal
is to make the government buy innovation,“ says angel investor Sharad Sharma,
one of the prime forces behind this movement. In August, the US-based XPrize
Foundation will announce a series of prizes in India. This organisation gives
big prizes for tackling difficult challenges in space exploration, health,
education and a few other areas. In India the first prize will be for providing
clean water, but its specifics will be announced in two months. “If you want
innovators to come in from the edges,“ says Zenia Tata, executive director of
global development at XPrize, “you have to incentivise them. A prize acts like
a magnet to bring in innovation.“
These challenges are clearly attracting Indian
innovators. IKP's programme, called Challenge Grants, is not quite a prize
because it involves milestone payments. But it is also structured like a prize
because the challenge is defined by the funders -Gates and DBT -and the
innovators compete for the grants. IKP so far has funded 13 innovators with
$30,000 each. Out of the initial winners, four innovators are going to the next
round worth $100,000. Says Deepanwita Chattopadhyay , CEO of IKP Knowledge Park
who has gone around the country promoting the concept: “There is a lot of
interest in the country and even senior scientists are applying for the
grants.“
TB treatment adherence is a big problem in the
country , especially in rural areas. ZMQ, a Delhi-based social enterprise,
developed a reporting system that prompts the patient to deliver a message each
time a tablet is consumed. Embryyo is developing a product which will
automatically send a signal when the patient takes out the tablet from the
medicine strip. Microsoft Research in Bengaluru, another shortlisted company ,
is developing an electronic pillbox -one-hundredth of the price of existing
ones -that will provide a number to call and record the transaction. “The
technology is very sim ple,“ says Bill Thies of Microsoft Research, “and we are
trying to create big impact.“
Meanwhile, another prize jointly funded by Gates
Foundation and USAID is also throwing up interesting healthcare technologies.
It provides $100,000 for exploring an idea, and then $1 million for proving it
if they make enough progress. It is drawing entrepreneurs across the country to
solving difficult problems in healthcare.
At the Institute of Microbial Technology in
Chandigarh, scientist Ashish Ganguly is developing a method to predict pre-term
births through a blood test. He and Imtech have formed a company , G1
Biosciences, that will take the innovation to the commercial market. Ganguly
uses a substance called gelsolin found in the blood after an injury.A birth is
like a programmed injury , and Gan guly found that blood levels of gelsolin are
a good indication of pre-term birth.Despite being in a large government lab,
Ganguly found the award invaluable. “The grant seeded the project,“ he says.
The exploratory grants are somewhere between a
regular grant and a full-fledged prize. Scientists usually pursue grants for
their projects, while prizes are clearly defined challenges where people
compete. The grand challenges' explorations are in healthcare.While they define
the areas and the criteria -low-cost, high societal impact -they leave the
innovator to work out the project.In the end, successful entrepreneurs receive
a prize of $1 million. In the past four years, six Indian scientists have won
$100,000. No one is yet to win $1 million.
At Seagull Biosolutions in Pune, a five member team
is using the grant to develop a vaccine for the dengue virus. There is no
vaccine yet for this disease, which affects 5-6 million people every year in
India. Seagull uses a re-engineered measles virus for a vaccine. In the
process, they have developed a platform technology that can be used to develop
vaccines for 15 other viral infections. If proved at a commercial level, the
platform can address a large global market for vaccines.“The grant brings
credibility ,“ says Seagull founder Vishwas Joshi, “as the Gates Foundation is
a early buyer of our technology .“
The next round of $1 million will be useful for
the company , and will add as much value to its product as a top-notch customer
would.
As innovations pick up in healthcare, a set of
individuals are trying to tackle another serious problem: low levels of
innovation in government projects. Since the government is expected to spend
large amounts of money in infrastructure projects, some tech industry observers
are trying to bring in innovation through attractive prizes. “We are trying to
get the private sector or philanthropists fund the prizes,“ says Lalitesh
Katragada, former country head of India products at Google. “We want the
government only to give a good order to the winners.“
The iPrize might take a few years to take roots,
but it could bring in a new level of innovation to large infrastructure
projects. In some ways, grand prizes is making a reentry to the country .
“India is not new to grand prizes,“ says Nandan Nilekani, former Infosys chief.
“The Aga Khan prize was constituted in 1929 for flying an aircraft from Delhi
to London non stop.“ Nearly a century later, grand prizes promise to make a big
difference to the country's problems.
Hari Pulakkat
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