GCE-India 3rd Call for Proposals: Addressing Global Health Challenges

Deadline: 31 August 2017

Proposals are open for “Grand Challenges Explorations India (GCE-India)” to encourage and nurture innovation in areas that impact global health.

This is the third call for proposals with the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (DBT), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as funding partners, IKP Knowledge Park (IKP), as an implementation partner, and the Program Management Unit at BIRAC (PMU-BIRAC) as the management partner.

Funding Information

INR 50 Lakh award from BIRAC and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
INR 10 Lakh prize upon successful completion of milestones
Technical and business strategy advice, access to synergistic networks of DBT, BIRAC, BMGF, IKP & their partners
Opportunity for Phase II funding of up to USD 1 Million

Key Challenges

Maternal and Child Health
- Wearables and Technology for Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health Behavior Change in low resource settings
- Addressing Newborn and Infant Gut Health through Bacteriophage-Mediated Microbiome Engineering
- Explore New Ways to Measure Brain Development
- Explore New Ways to Measure Gestational Age
- Explore New Ways to predict and prevent Birth Asphyxia
- Explore New Ways to predict and prevent Neonatal sepsis
Family Planning
- Develop Novel Platforms to Accelerate Contraceptive Drug Discovery
- Develop the Next Generation of Condom
Infectious Diseases
- Innovations for Novel Diagnostic Systems
- Explore New Solutions for Global Health Priority Areas – Enable self-testing for cervical cancer
- Innovative Solutions to re-purposing old drugs, surveillance and Point of Care Diagnostics to mitigate Antimicrobial Resistance
Nutrition
- Novel Enabling Tools and Models Supporting Development of Interventions for Enteric Dysfunction
- Explore Nutrition for Healthy Growth of Infants and Children
Mental Health
- New Approaches for Detection, Treatment, and Control of mental health

Eligibility Criteria

Proposals are open to anyone from any discipline from India – from researchers and faculty in colleges/ universities/government laboratories/ institutions to startups and SMEs as well as non-profit organizations.
Indian Nationals can apply. Indian companies applying for the award should have Registration under Companies Act 1956, and must have 51% equity or shareholding by Indian Nationals only including NRIs. More than 49 % investments by OCI/PIO or any foreign entities will lead to ineligibility. NGOs/ Foundations/ Not-for-Profit Organizations/ Community bodies involved in social innovation or S&T activities must have active participation in India. They need to submit an illustration of their active programs in the country as well as their accomplishment when requested. The statutory recognition through Society Act or SIRO will add credentials when provided.
GCE-India will NOT fund:
- Ideas that do not address one of the key challenges listed above
- Ideas or solutions not aligned with the Global Health priority areas of Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (DBT), the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Ideas without a clearly-articulated and testable hypothesis
- Ideas not directly relevant to developing countries
- Ideas for which a relevant indicator of success cannot be demonstrated within the scope of the GCE-India award of INR 50 Lakh
- Approaches that represent incremental improvements to conventional solutions (e.g., research of current methods for vaccine discovery, development and delivery intended to expand, improve or integrate existing technologies or tools)
- Basic research without clear relevance to the goals of this topic
- Solely behavioral change/educational initiatives (e.g., training programs, scholarships, education programs)
- Solely infrastructure or capacity-building initiatives
- Approaches that present unacceptable downstream safety risks (e.g., as a barrier to product development)