How Years of Perseverance built an Innovative Biotech Startup out of India: In talks with Tuhin Bhowmick, Co-Founder, Pandorum Technologies.
In the next episode of Founder's Feed, we called a Deep Tech Entrepreneur who is building for the Future. A powerpack of Biotech Startup, Struggle behind Research based startup and taste of success.
Context: Many of you are unaware of how the deep tech startup ecosystem works. These startups do not follow a fancy path of quick money, instead, they persevere to build revolutionary products for years, keeping the next 10 years in mind. For example, OpenAI worked in stealth for years before they came out with ChatGPT. This episode with a deep tech entrepreneur from a core department and many more to come aim to develop a scientific temperament to pursue your core engineering field through entrepreneurship.
Shashank: Can you give us a Brief Intro about yourself and your startup, Pandorum Technologies?
Tuhin: Pandorum is a Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine startup which has built regenerative tech for the Liver and Lungs for research purposes and our flagship product is Bioengineered Cornea which can treat Blindness.
I did my PhD from IISc Bangalore and later got incubated through BIRAC. Later, we raised funds from Angel investors like Sachin and Binny Bansal(Flipkart) and other institutional investors. Now, we are a team of 35 scientists with two R&D Centers in Bangalore and the Bay Area, USA and two Clinical Translation centers in Delhi and Northwestern University, USA.
Shashank: eDC is involved with many undergrads and post-grads students but we see very few PhD candidates getting involved in the startup. What made you choose this path?
Tuhin: When I was doing my PhD from IISc, my plan was to dive into science and become a faculty. I was from the Physics dept. and took many courses in Crystallography.
I didn’t even know what a Business model is or how to make one.
The shift to entrepreneurship was due to a very core personal reason. My father was diagnosed with Lung Cancer and after a fight for 9 months, we started to lose hope.
I found a research paper from Ashwagandha with an innovative medicine to cure that cancer. I showed that to the Oncologist. He appreciated the efforts but said that they were using a 20-year-old medicinal cure and this sort of new cure will take at least 20 more years to come to patients finally. I saw this huge gap between research and advanced application.
It made me question that,
“What is the point of doing all this science if it cannot be utilized to treat human suffering?”
Shashank: You mention that gap between research and application. How do you think one can bridge that gap?
Tuhin: This transition happens in two parts, one is from Research to Clinical Success and from Clinical Success to Commercial Success. You don’t build this in sequence, you build it in parallel.
While you are building the product, you have to keep the target patient, its market size, the differentials and the challenges in mind. One thing which is mandatory for all such startups like ours is Empathy. If I ask myself the question of whether I will use this product on my mom and the answer is yes, then the product has my confidence. We are one year away from clinical trials of our liquid cornea product and it has been a super fulfilling journey until now.
Also, a very important aspect of product building is the team. We are a team of PhDs, Post Docs and MDs and for most of them, we are their first company.
Shashank: By now, we understood the motivation to dive into the startup world. But, how did you start your venture in 2010?
Tuhin: During the time my dad was admitted, I was constantly looking for some income source. This is when my friend, now Co-founder Arun, told me about the Biotechnology Entrepreneurship Team(BEST) Competition which was ₹5Lakh as the first prize. We applied for it and came first.
Due to this, we happened to visit the Department of Biotechnology(DBT) and the Secretary of DBT asked me one question, “Are you having fun?”. Now, I understand the importance of that line, because things get so tough down the line and why would someone do something which is so consuming at all levels and demands too many sacrifices? All these FDA approvals have come at a cost of sacrifices. But why did we do it? Because at some core level, we were having fun!
Shashank: You mentioned the BEST program. Do you think Govt. grants and initiatives like these help and if yes, then can you name any?
Tuhin: So in 2011, we registered the company and took a proposal of ₹3cr. to develop a “bio-ink” which can be used to mimic cornea, liver and skin.
In 2012, BiG (Biotech Ignition Grant) was launched by BIRAC (Govt. of India) which generously funds these kinds of Scientific projects. If you’re from a basic science background and have come up with an application concept, you can apply it to initiatives like BiG. We were funded ₹50 Lakhs by BiG in 2012.
Later, we also got into SIBRI, again by BIRAC. This kept us going and by 2014, we developed Liver MicroTissue, which was something very few people had done in the world at that time.
Shashank: By now, we have a fair idea of your journey of starting up. How did you come up with this recent product of yours, Bioengineered Cornea?
Tuhin: By 2016, We developed the technology to accommodate the heterogeneous distribution of cells in liver tissue at a micro level, which was recognised by Sachin and Binny Bansal and this is when we raised our seed round.
We had options to get into multiple applications of this technology like Lungs, Brain or Skin but we chose to focus only on the cornea because a single product with 6mm of diameter and half mm of thickness can give a great deal of peripheral as well as central vision to the patient. Since 10 ml of mass can cure up to 3000 patients, this has inherent scalability over large tissues like Skin where 10ml of the same can print only a few square inches of skin tissue.
Shashank: Coming to the last and very important question, Opportunities. Can you map the whole Biotechnology space for us in brief, in India and Abroad? Where do you see the upcoming opportunities?
Tuhin: Since I have worked in a specific discipline of Biotechnology. I do not feel I am qualified to give this answer. But still, I can try.
Biotechnology is a massively diverse industry. On one side, we have medicine and on the other, we have Bioenergy.
My co-founder was also from Aerospace and was working on developing next-generation rocket fuel using a catalyst which used mesoporous nanoparticles which optimized surface area v/s mass.
Coming back to the point, I would rather recommend a very nice podcast by Nikhil Kamath with Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, India’s Self-made Richest Woman. I was surprised to see our logo during the podcast.
Final words by Team eDC
The sole aim of this series is to discover the opportunity in the intersection of your core department and entrepreneurship. Through these entrepreneurs, we bring you an insight into their journey and prescribe opportunities.
This session with Mr. Tuhin Bhowmick might feel a little technical for some. Still, Famous entrepreneurs expect students from India’s premier institute to have a sense of curiosity to know more about something which they have no clue about. This is what makes us good engineers.
Stay tuned for upcoming episodes from different sectors such as EV tech, space tech, material tech, climate tech, semiconductors and many more.
For feedback and criticism, you can mail us at startup@edciitd.com.
In attendance:
Shashank Choudhary(Co-ordinator, Startup Support)
Ayush Sharma(Co-ordinator, Editorial)
Khushi Singh(Member, iGEM IITD)
Chinmay Yadav(Executive, Editorial)
Shivi Sisodiya (Executive, Editorial)
Additional Links:
BIRAC (Check Programmes Menu): https://www.birac.nic.in/
FITT-IITD Incubator: https://fitt-iitd.in/web/government-program
List of Dept. of Biotechnology and Biochemical Engg professors: https://beb.iitd.ac.in/faculty.html
Pandorum coverage on inc42: https://inc42.com/buzz/exclusive-biotech-startup-pandorum-technologies-raises-over-inr-41-cr/