IP Shakti, LLC, a Princeton based innovation fund, offers a new approach for investing in the early stages of life science and biomedical innovation.
University inventors often face the “valley of death” funding gap when they look to develop a new innovation. IP Shakti is now an option for medical device innovators when venture capital and other funding sources are unwilling or unable help.
“The launch of IP Shakti could not come at a more critical time,” said Dr. Dipanjan Nag, CEO and President of IP Shakti. “Due to fundamental challenges in venture capital investing, early stage inventions in biotechnology and their corresponding smaller initial investment requirements are increasingly overlooked or rejected by venture capital in favor of more developed technologies. This exacerbates the “valley of death” funding gap after a startup company is created and before a steady stream of company revenue exists.”
IP Shakti utilizes an open innovation model to de-risk medical device technologies by performing critical and essential proof of concept (POC) development. IP Shakti works with the existing centers of excellence at universities that have been created by the more than $600 billion in federal funding of university research. “I call it the ‘other trillion’ that has been spent by the federal government to ensure that the USA stays ahead in the knowledge economy,” continues Dr. Nag. “We are just ensuring that the wealth of expertise created is utilized for bringing new products to the market.”
IP Shakti also creates virtual and physical POC centers, to support research efforts and technology development. This additional development helps to gradually de-risk the technology for future licensing or find the optimum direction to market. “There is a reason the United States leads the world in entrepreneurship,” said Audrey Spangenberg, Chairman of the Board of Directors for IP Shakti, “it’s our system of continuously rewarding innovation and always looking forward.”
“IP Shakti is addressing a critical need in commercializing early-stage, university-generated innovations,” said Dr. Don Rose, Director of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Carolina KickStart. “Two things impress me about their model. They bring more than funding to the table by taking a role in assessing the technology, building the management team, and the licensing the technology. Secondly, they are deploying funds in a capital efficient process, focusing on the most critical experiments for de-risking the technology.”
About the company: Building upon Shakti, the Sanskrit word for empowerment, IP Shakti was founded in 2012 by Dr. Dipanjan Nag. IP Shakti’s mission is to provide financial, managerial and licensing support to help their partners in early stage biotechnology development to overcome initial investment problems. For more information on IP Shakti, LLC, please visit http://www.ipshakti.com, or contact Kaitlyn Turo, at kturo (at) ipshakti (dot) com or (609)759-1101.
Read more at http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2012/09/05/ip-shakti-launches-fund-empower-medical-device-innovators#uy0zRp711HZGXqZ6.99
