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FITT IIT Delhi, in collaboration with Pfizer India as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative and ecosystem partner Social Alpha, successfully hosted "Translating What's Next: Securing the Future of Innovation" at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
The event unveiled 20 winning startups of the Pfizer INDovation Program (IP Support Edition) 2025–26 - a flagship, first-of-its-kind initiative, purpose-built to accelerate India's next generation of healthcare and innovators. The programme provides winning ventures with end-to-end technical and legal IP consultation, comprehensive commercialisation support, and privileged access to a curated network of investors, venture capitalists, and seasoned industry mentors.
By placing intellectual property at the heart of a startup's strategy, the INDovation programme addresses a critical gap in India's innovation pipeline - equipping founders and their ideas with the legal and commercial armour to protect, scale, and globalise them.
"The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission is not merely a government scheme - it is the digital spine of a new India. Interoperable health infrastructure, data-driven systems, and technology-enabled access will fundamentally rewrite who gets care, when they get it, and how,” said Dr M Srinivas, former director, AIIMS New Delhi & Member (Health), NITI Aayog.
Bhuvnesh Pratap Singh, director, Startup India Singh's underscored the indispensable role of accessible healthcare technologies in realising this vision.
"The gap between a breakthrough in a laboratory and a breakthrough in the market is where most innovations die. Closing that gap requires bold industry-academia partnerships, relentless translational research, and startups willing to bet on deep tech, said Tarun Chaturvedi, COO, FITT IIT Delhi
"We at Pfizer recognize that sustainable healthcare transformation cannot happen in silos, but demands innovation enablers, cross-border collaboration, and ecosystem partnerships to translate breakthroughs into real impact for people around the world,” said Sharad Goswami, senior director, global policy & international public affairs, Pfizer India.
Beyond the podium addresses, the event featured two standout panel discussions that challenged conventional thinking and offered provocative, practitioner-led insights. One was ‘What Actually Makes Healthcare Innovation Defensible?’ This brought together IP strategists, healthcare practitioners, policymakers, and industry leaders to dissect how strong intellectual property strategy, rigorous translational science, and market readiness are becoming non-negotiable for globally competitive healthcare innovation.
The second was ‘Regulation as a Product Strategy, Not a Compliance Checklist’ a paradigm-shifting session that reframed regulatory foresight from a bureaucratic burden into a powerful strategic growth driver for emerging healthcare and biotech startups.
The key outcomes of the initiative include 20 high-potential healthcare and biotech startups identified and empowered through rigorous selection. There was end-to-end IP consultation: technical patent strategy + legal protection frameworks. There was direct access to investors, VCs, and industry mentors through a curated ecosystem network. Comprehensive commercialisation roadmaps were tailored to global market entry. The policy dialogue integrated regulatory strategy as a core startup competency, said the communication note.
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