One of India’s largest private hospital chains, Apollo hospitals is setting up an accelerator and innocation hub to mentor startups in the healthcare space.
Speaking exclusively to The News Minute on the sidelines of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 in Hyderabad, Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director of Apollo Hospitals said that the accelerator and innovation hub is being created so that startups can come and talks about their ideas, their innovations and validate some of them.
“We are working to help startups. Many of them are coming to meet us and we are helping them validate their ideas with doctors. I think that’s really the big need. Money is available with many people but actually giving advice in terms of what will work, what will not work is equally valuable to them,” Sangita said.
However, there is will also a fund at the backend of the accelerator that will look to invest in innovative startups in the accelerator. “The size of the fund is not yet decided but it won’t be too large. We are only looking at a small-size fund,” Sangita added.
The innovation hub will be launched in the next 30 days and will be in Hyderabad, on the campus of Apollo Hospitals. However, Sangita also said that it will be partnering with an existing innovation hub or incubator in Hyderabad to have one hub placed there.
Sangita says that the focus of the innovation hub will be on healthcare startups, because there is quite a bit that Apollo can contribute in different areas, given the scale of the organization. “If someone is working in Mental Health, we can plug them in with someone here. If its in the field of childcare, we have the largest children’s wing to help them out. We also have resources to help startups in areas such as biotechnology, orthopedic and cartilage growth.
The accelerator will also look to tie up with several corporate players for required mentoring in adjacent fields.
While speaking at panel at the GES 2017 summits, Sangita also said that there is a focus on artificial intelligence and related areas, where Apollo Hospitals is running some proof of concepts and pilot projects. Few startups can even buy machines and aggregate demand and provide service, she added.