We are living our best lives in the 21st century and there is one thing to thank for that: innovation. Advances in science and technology have made this the greatest century of human progress in history. Innovation is at the core of everything we do at Pfizer, globally and in India. While we continue to innovate, we also want to support others who want to do the same.

Pfizer has collaborated with Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog, Social Alpha, Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT), IIT-Delhi, AGNIi, and the UN Health Innovation Exchange (UNHIEX), among others, to launch the INDovation Programme. As the name says, INDovation supports breakthrough healthcare innovations by start-ups in India, for India and the world.

INDovation stands for three things— innovation, which is the quest that we are on through this program, our country, from where the exciting future of global healthcare will emerge, and the word ovation, which is an attempt to acknowledge the young start-ups that will chart the future path of healthcare innovation in India and the world.

Now, we are joining hands with NIPER-Ahmedabad to help 6 early-stage startups advance on their journey to the market. Eligible startups can now apply to be a part of this year’s INDovation program by clicking here.

In India, the thriving R&D ecosystem continues to play a vital role in shaping the future of the healthcare industry. With this conviction, we initiated a collaboration with the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) at IIT Delhi to launch the Pfizer-IIT Delhi Innovation and IP Program in 2015. This unique incubation accelerator program promotes and supports start-ups to develop novel healthcare solutions that have the potential to prevent, diagnose or treat patients in India and across the world.

Through Version 1.0 of the programme, we successfully incubated nine healthcare innovators and supported 19 IP filings in areas such as diagnostic innovations, drug delivery platforms, medical devices, medical simulation, and training of healthcare workers. This phase of the program supported innovators to bring their ideas to a stage of prototype, offered them funding upto 50 lacs and incubation and IP support. With the success of our earlier collaboration with IIT-Delhi, we are confident that we can scale up our Industry-Academia-Government partnership to support India’s brilliant young healthcare start-ups to become solution providers to the world and commercial success stories in the process. Pfizer INDovation is focused on few healthcare priorities.

The Pfizer IIT Delhi Innovation and IP Program focused on broad areas of healthcare; with INDovation we are specifically looking at identifying, nurturing, and taking to market start-ups specifically in the areas of oncology and digital health.

These themes have been thought through and identified as the focus areas for this year due to the increasing burden of cancer in India coupled with late intervention, and the emerging use of digital health as a solution to ensure better outcomes.

Power of partnerships

From the first leg of this program, we learnt that start-ups have a technical knowledge but need support for commercialization and market access; through INDovation we will identify advance level start-ups and support them through their journey—from prototype to market launch. INDovation brings together esteemed partners to address the challenges start-ups face after crossing the early-stage product development so that many of these unique ideas and solutions can become commercially successful products.

The program is being supported by AIM, NITI Aayog, Social Alpha, FITT, IIT-Delhi, AGNIi, UNHIEX, PATH, AHPI, St Johns Research Institute, HCG Hospitals, Cytecare Hospitals, FICCI, UNHIEX, Google for Startups, Design Alpha, HIMSS, Marico Innovation Foundation, and TenX2.

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