K’taka Dy CM launches 6 locally developed products to fight Covid
Bengaluru: Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister C.N. Ashwathnarayan on Tuesday launched six Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) approved products made by startups to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
“These products will reduce our burden of importing expensive equipment and tools in fighting this pandemic,” said Ashwashtnarayan about the products made by startups incubated at the Bangalore Bio-innovation Centre (BBC).
The six products are Shieldex 24, Florescence probes and PCR mix, Daksh, VTM, Cov-Astra and Anti-microbial face wash.
Developed by Ravi Kumar at Biofi, Shieldex 24 is a UV-ROS box for Covid sterilisation. It can help eliminate viruses located on objects and is useful in the transportation industry.
Govindarajan and Meher Prakash from VNIR have developed the Florescence probes and PCR mix for RTPCR detection.
These probes are part of Covid testing kits which are currently being imported. Without these probes, detecting the virus is not possible.
Similarly, Arun Agrawal from Janitri has developed Daksh, a remote foetal monitoring device which is used in treating Covid positive pregnant women. Daksh helps in monitoring foetuses.
Manjunath and Dinesh from Deno Bio labs at IBAB have developed the VTM which helps in safely transporting live virus samples from a sample collection centre to a testing lab.
Cov-Astra is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based device which can detect Covid virus through x-ray, relegating the conventional throat swab for testing people for the virus.
Developed by Adarsh Nararajan from Aindra A, Cov-Astra can help detect the virus at a significantly lower price of Rs 150 to Rs 250 per person.
Latha Damle and team from Atrimed have developed an anti-microbial face wash containing herbal anti-microbials, which can kill viruses on the face in a fraction of seconds.
“This initiative of developing products locally is in line with our Prime Minister’s ‘Aatmanirbhar’ mission. We must take pride of the fact that we have reached this level of innovating and producing locally,” said Ashwathnarayan about the new products.
The six products will be made available in the market with immediate effect and the state government will promote them as all of them are made by Kannadigas.
“These products are of superior quality and will contribute to tackling Covid across the country. I congratulate all the startups and the innovators for bringing out these products in time,” added the Deputy CM.
