The Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, has announced the setting up of CAWACH – a centre with Rs 56 crore fund to back more start-ups and more out-of-the-box ideas to beat coronavirus. CAWACH stands for Centre for Augmenting WAR with COVID-19 Health Crisis.
CAWACH
The centre will have the important task of identifying up to 50 innovations and startups that can help in the current situation and supporting them. The implementing agency will be Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINEE), a business incubator at IIT Bombay. It is an initiative by the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), DST.
SINE will be supported by Indian STEPs and Business Incubator Association (ISBA) in implementation of the program. CAWACH supports innovations in the areas of diagnostics, devices, informatics including bio-informatics & information management systems, any intervention for the control of COVID-19 and/ or startup ideas to address/ mitigate various challenges faced by the country / society due to the severe impact of COVID-19.
Supported Products and Solutions
- High thrust products and solutions
- High impact products based on frugal innovations that address COVID-19 challenges
Ventilators and PPE
- Portable ventilators, Respirator, Resuscitator, Pulse oximeters, Oxygen concentrators and other peripheral medical equipment such as Contactless thermometers & Stethoscopes, Patient monitoring system, accessories
- Personal Protective Equipment (Masks, Shields, Suits, Goggles, Linen and disposable gowns, gloves, lab shoes), relevant medical accessories
- Sterilizers and Disinfectants: Sanitizers, Disinfectants and allied systems such as Booths / Community disinfectant stations / chambers, Bio-hazardous waste management solutions, Large scale sanitization and sterilization, Surface sterilization units (preferably automated & IoT enabled)
- Diagnostic: Rapid Antibody & Antigen diagnostic kits, Other diagnostic kits, Genomics based mapping solutions, Reagents, Safe sample collections
- Informatics: Health care information systems, Movement tracking & tracing, Crowd management, Geofencing, Logistics, any containment solutions involving software / mobile applications, Patient tracking / monitoring systems
- Any solution that addresses / mitigates various challenges faced by country / society due to severe impact of COVID-19
- Product / solution near-ready, ready for deployment or manufacturing scaleup or repurposing of existing products and services that can be quickly deployed
