Atal Incubation Centre – Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) celebrated the completion its first year of incubating deep tech start-ups in life sciences at AIC-CCMB with great pomp on 13th April, 2019 at its campus. The programme, aptly called ‘Pride and Prejudice’, witnessed a large assembly of prominent life scientists, life science industry leaders and enablers to urge the Indian Lifes ciences Industry to become partners in the new revolution of home-grown innovations.

Dr. N.  Madhusudhana Rao, CEO of AIC-CCMB showcased its achievements over the last one year. During this period, AIC-CCMB has incubated 8 start-ups working on a range of topics, including diagnostics, food, pharmaceuticals and drug discovery, with two successful graduations. AIC-CCMB has become a prominent player in the larger Telangana startup ecosystem, taking forward the state’s thrust on Biotechnology.

Dr. Rakesh Mishra, Director CSIR-CCMB emphasized the importance of technology translation of institutional innovation and the incubation center is one such important arm of CCMB.

The event hosted a panel discussion on ‘Overcoming Apprehensions of Life Science Industries in Institutional Innovations’. The panellists consisted of those with long experience with start-up incubators housed in educational and research institutes of India. The discussion focused on the key reasons  why industries do not engage with prestigious Indian Institutions like CSIR labs and startups incubated by them, the challenges in translation and how they can be done to mitigate these issues.

Director General, CSIR, Dr. Shekhar Mande, chief guest at the occasion remarked that it is the age of life sciences, and CSIR-CCMB is ideally poised to help the emerging life science start-ups with technical and intellectual expertise.

The event was attended by a number of industry doyens like Dr. Krishna Ella; Ishita Agrawal from AIM, NITI Aayog; Dr. A.V. Rama Rao; Dr. Satya Prakash Dash; Ram Kaundinya and many others.