- Honeywell’s HHSIF, in collaboration with FSID at IISc, backs Indian deep science start-ups, offering INR 9 crores over 4 years. This year, they support 10 new ventures, including ‘AI Highway’ for cardiac screening and OpenWater.in for wastewater treatment
Honeywell Hometown Solutions India Foundation (HHSIF), the philanthropic arm of Honeywell, in partnership with Foundation for Science, Innovation and Development (FSID), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), renowned for its cutting-edge deep sciences research, has extended research and financial support to 37 Indian start-ups, extending capital worth Rs 9 crores over the last four years. With intensive focus on agri-tech, clean-tech, health-tech and green-tech, Honeywell has extended funding worth Rs 2.4 crores in FY23-24 to eight start-ups and five entrepreneurship-in-residence programs (EIRs), and further plans to on-board 10 new start-ups in the current fiscal.
Through this collaboration, Honeywell provides seed funding and essential research support to start-ups in the realm of deep science focusing on addressing environmental, agricultural and health challenges. Over the years, the synergy between Honeywell and IISc has been highly sought after by emerging start-ups as the partnership not only offers them seed capital, but also extends access to state-of-the-art facilities, connect with industry stakeholders & government bodies, global network of High Net Worth Individuals (HNIs), Angels, Venture Capitalists (VCs) as well as Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in India.
In FY23-24, Honeywell and IISc’s collaborative benefits were extended to health/med-tech companies like Papyrus Diagnostics, Akumen Artificial Intelligence, Hoyasan Labs, Cellsion Technologies and Easescan MedTech and to agri-tech companies like Kaiza Tech and Green Collar Agritech as well clean-tech start-up Mushloop.
This year’s start-ups range from eight to ten and around three to five entrepreneurship-in-residence programs will be supported.
An exemplary start-up supported by Honeywell and IISc is ‘AI Highway,’ offering cost-effective cardiac disease screening systems leveraging advanced signal processing and AI capabilities that can screen, detect and predict cardio-respiratory disorders. This innovation holds the potential to alleviate the burden on cardiologists and address the significant shortage of professionals in India, estimated at over 84,000. Additionally, support to OpenWater.in, a start-up that provides wastewater treatment, used the grant to design and deploy a 25,000 litres/day system at Mavallipura, a village about 20 kms north of Bengaluru city. The quality of groundwater here is extremely poor due to solid waste on the landfill close to the village that led to contamination of the water sources. OpenWater has deployed a solution that treats contamination in groundwater.
Dfine Bio Innovations is a Medtech start-up supported by Honeywell grant. The start-up has developed an indigenously built hemostasis system named FibriTimer Zeta-1 (a first by any Indian Company). Zeta – 1 uses the patented dual technology and helps clinicians in understanding the defects in humans for bleeding and thrombosis events. Zeta 1 is designed for professional use in clinical laboratory setup. The product is ISO certified and approved by CDSCO and is a life-saving device. The product is priced significantly below available products in the market.
