Honeywell India Funds Deep Science Startups Through Partnership With IISc
Honeywell has extended funding worth Rs 2.4 crore in FY23-24 to eight startups and five entrepreneurship-in-residence programmes, and plans to onboard 10 new startups in the current fiscal
Honeywell India has extended research and financial support worth Rs 9 crore to 37 Indian startups over the last four years, through its collaboration with Indian Institute of Science’s Foundation for Science, Innovation and Development.
With a focus on agri-tech, clean-tech, health-tech and green-tech, Honeywell has extended funding worth Rs 2.4 crore in FY23-24 to eight startups and five entrepreneurship-in-residence programmes, and plans to onboard 10 new startups in the current fiscal, the company said in a press release.
Through the collaboration with IISc, Honeywell provides seed funding and research support to startups in the areas of deep tech, focusing on addressing environmental, agricultural and health challenges.
The collaboration has worked to extend access to facilities, connect with industry stakeholders and government bodies, network with angel investors, venture capitalists as well as micro, small and medium enterprises in India.
“Our core focus is not just to extend financial support but also to encourage deep science/tech research which fuels the innovative prowess of these businesses. Over the past four years, we have worked with over 40 startups and will be onboarding another 10 in the upcoming financial year,” said Ashish Modi, president of Honeywell India.
According to Honeywell, in FY23-24, the collaborative benefits were extended to health/med-tech companies such as Papyrus Diagnostics, Hoyasan Labs, Akumen Artificial Intelligence and Cellsion Technologies and to agri-tech companies such as Kaiza Tech and Green Collar Agritech.
One of the startups supported by Honeywell and IISc is AI Highway, which offers cost-effective cardiac disease screening systems leveraging advanced signal processing and AI capabilities that can screen, detect and predict cardio-respiratory disorders.
The grant to OpenWater.in, a startup that provides wastewater treatment, was used to design and deploy a 25,000 litres/day system at Mavallipura, a village about 20 kms away from Bengaluru. OpenWater has deployed a solution that treats contamination in ground water.
Additionally, Dfine Bio Innovations is a med-tech startup supported by Honeywell. It has developed an indigenously developed hemostatis system, which uses the patented dual technology and helps clinicians understand the defects in humans for bleeding and thrombosis events.
“Deep science startups are characterised by long gestation periods, require significant upfront capital and access to world class labs and sophisticated tools to take their innovation from lab to market,” said B Gurumoorthy, director of FSID and professor at IISc.
“Honeywell has been an outstanding partner for us in this journey, providing the much-needed capital and intellectual support to our entrepreneurs in furthering their journey,” Gurumoorthy added.
