Former Infosys Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Bengaluru-based Axilor Ventures, S D Shibulal said start-ups in the health care and biotech sectors “do not have a proper platform or framework to do high-end testing and lack adequate avenues to collaborate with hospitals”.

“In health care, the right frameworks do not exist. For example, start-ups do not have access to doctors, technicians, or labs and all these frameworks need to be built. Axilor is trying to build these frameworks,” Shibulal told.

Indian biotech and health care start-ups are facing tougher challenges compared with their global counterparts.

While, majority of the start-up firms in the country are not getting adequate funding, firms in biotech and health care do not get right platform to test their products.

A report, released in October, by Nasscom has mentioned there are more than 250 start-ups in the health care space in India currently and of them more than 100 were incorporated this year.

The sector received a total funding of about $130 million. The report added that more than 60 per cent academic incubators in India have health tech product start-ups as one of their prime areas of focus.

Ventures in health care are struggling in the country primarily because of lack of mentors and investors. It is also difficult for such start-ups to take doctors on board, as there is dearth of doctors who can come out of practice due to the demand.

In the recent past, an array of such start-ups have come up in areas like diagnostic care, aggregators for medical practitioners or firms that focus on treatment of a specific disease.

A lot of them have taken longer to break-even and some of them are yet to get their finances right. Industry experts say such ventures take time to monetise.

Shibulal explains it rightly for the whole start-up ecosystem. “In Silicon Valley, there are about 10 angels for one entrepreneur, whereas, in India, there is about one angel for 10 entrepreneurs. That must change.”

This is quite true for the health care or biotech sector given the track record of start-ups in this segment. The Axilor Ventures founder has urged for better ecosystem for the start-ups.

Source: Business Standard