Funding is a key challenge for start-ups in life-sciences and healthcare area, according to an EY report.
The report, ‘Life Sciences 4.0: Transforming Healthcare in India’, was presented at the inaugural session of BioAsia 2019, which began here on Monday.
Survey results
EY conducted a survey with 60 life-sciences and healthcare start-ups in India to gauge the success factors, challenges, collaboration landscape, growth areas for start-ups and their digital maturity.
About 35 per cent of the participants in the survey said that getting funds was the key challenge, followed by understanding of the regulatory process, and collaborating with larger life-sciences and healthcare companies.
Lack of sufficient funding was evident from the fact that 43 per cent of respondents had bootstrapped while 42 per cent were leveraging government incubators.
According to the report, the Indian healthcare system is being reshaped by three forces — increasing healthcare demand, technological ubiquity, and rising patient awareness.
Rising prevalence of lifestyle diseases and an ageing population are the major factors leading to increasing demand for specialised healthcare in India. However, the Indian healthcare system currently lacks sufficient infrastructure to meet the healthcare demands of the country.
Excellence award
During the inaugural session, Don Cleveland, Member of Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research, University of California, San Diego, was presented the Genome Valley Excellence Award by Telangana Governor ESL Narasimhan at the inaugural function.
Cleveland is the recipient of the Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences 2018, His research work is leading to significant contributions in the development of designer DNA drugs targeted at diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington Disease.
The three-day event will feature around 100 eminent speakers from across the globe and about 1,500 delegates.