India and the UK to jointly fight COVID-19

Naveen S Garewal
Tribune News Service
Hyderabad, August 11 

The UK government and Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ) have joined hands to balance out the gap between demand and supply of ventilators and essential medical equipment to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Innovative Indian med-tech start-ups have been invited to apply by end of the month to be a part of the new Rs 5.6 million manufacturing support programme.

A statement of the British High Commission said selected start-ups will be hosted at AMTZ’s MediValley incubation centre, receiving financial, technical and infrastructure support necessary to make their equipment market-ready.

The programme is part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed recently between the UK government and AMTZ.

The MoU aims to boost med-tech collaboration between the two countries by creating direct research and development linkages between UK companies and AMTZ’s manufacturing and testing facilities, and to the wider Indian healthcare market.

UK High Commissioner Philip Barton said, “COVID-19 affects every human being on the planet and respects no border. The need for collaboration on science and innovation between nations has never been more important. The UK is already India’s second-biggest research partner, with joint research expected to be worth £400 million by 2021.

“Last month, we announced five new projects to tackle anti-microbial resistance. I am delighted that this new med-tech programme takes our partnership even further. I look forward to seeing the life-saving solutions we can pioneer by bringing the best scientific minds from the UK and India together as a force for good in the world.”

Dr Jitendar Sharma, Managing Director and CEO, AMTZ said: “AMTZ is happy to sign memorandum of understanding with the British High Commission for encouraging innovations in medical devices, particularly on those products that are necessary for fight against the global pandemic of Covid. Through this partnership, British High Commission and AMTZ aims to encourage a number of innovators and provide them with technical, technological, financial, entrepreneurial and strategic hand holding enabling them to leapfrog from idea to innovation and from a start-up to an established enterprise. This is with an aim to serve the global innovation community”

The call for partnership is open till August 31, 2020, for all Indian start-ups, MSMEs and innovators. This includes those at prototype, development, pilot, validation, early traction, and scaling stages. The application form is available here and further details can be found on the AMTZ website and British High Commission’s social media pages.

Selected start-ups will be based in AIC-MediValley at AMTZ and they will have access to the state-of-the-art infrastructure support, technical guidance from experienced mentors, domestic and international sourcing support, manufacturing scale-up support for successful start-ups, collaboration opportunities with the UK and Indian med-tech companies.