DERBI: Nurturing healthcare startups to achieve their full potential

NT Correspondent

As a Healthtech focused technology business incubator, DERBI Foundation has built a unique ecosystem for identifying and nurturing startups which leverage technology to solve healthcare problems for India and the world at large.

Deep mentoring, prototyping and validation support, go to market and funding are wonderfully intertwined into their customised programs, PACE, Gallop and Emerge for early, mid and late stage startups respectively.

The multifunctional expertise of the Dayananda Sagar group in healthcare ranging from pharma to nursing to dental to medical school offers fertile ground for innovation and validation for startup solutions. With CDSIMER, the school of medicine and research, startups also have an opportunity to conduct CDCSO approved clinical trials adding to the pilot trials at Sagar hospitals. This enables DERBI to offer a unique holistic end to end ecosystem: from idea to market in health-tech all under one roof.

The genesis of DERBI was the entrepreneurship cell activities started way back in 2009 at Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering. From supporting student entrepreneurs, to established startups to a full-fledged established technology business incubator, DERBI has traversed a long and interesting journey with some significant numbers: 1700+ entrepreneurs reached out to, 1500+ mentoring hours, 147 startups supported and 67 startups provided grants/funds.

In these pandemic times, with healthcare in the limelight, healthtech startups are growing both in numbers and in size. DERBI CEO Dr Lakshmi Jagannathan says, “With its lasersharp focus on healthtech, DERBI endeavours to not only to create a differentiation in the incubation ecosystem but also handhold startups across their business life cycle thus enabling to build a healthier society at large”.