The Asian Association of Business Incubation, the pan-Asian association of incubators from 19 nations and regions, has selected Pune-based Venture Centre for its Incubator of the Year Award for 2018. Venture Centre shall be sharing this award with the Shanghai Yangpu Technology Business Incubator in China.

This annual award aims to recognize overall excellence in incubation performance. The incubators are compared for the quality of the leadership team, range of services offered, good practices, scale and scope of activities, financial and operational stability and impact.

Dr V Premnath, Director, Venture Centre said, “This award is a recognition of the sustained efforts of the Venture Centre team and the support of the extended network of experts and mentors in CSIR-NCL and Pune city and in many other places who have actively supported Venture Centre in promoting technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.  We hope this international recognition will help us build much stronger international linkages for our startups.”

The AABI has also decided to recognize Venture Centre’s incubatee company, WeInnovate Biosolutions, with the  AABI Torch Entrepreneur Award for 2018. This award aims to honor an entrepreneur who has developed an outstanding innovation. WeInnovate Biosolutions is a startup company focussed on solving the problem of difficult-to-heal wounds by providing novel wound healing products and antimicrobial susceptibility diagnostics.

Dr Milind Choudhari, Founder and CEO of WeInnovate Biosolutions, said, “Winning the AABI torch award 2018 means a lot. An entrepreneurs' journey is full of ups and downs and such an appreciation is really a morale booster. WeInnovate Biosolutions is overwhelmed to receive this award especially in Internationalisation category. Looking forward, we hope this will lead to more international collaborations and business opportunities.”