MFCEM WORKSHOP #11
By
Ms. Mihikaa Jain, business development associate in San Francisco Bay Area
on
Biomedical Entrepreneurship
As part of the MFCEM workshop series, an interactive session with Ms. Mihikaa Jain on Biomedical Entrepreneurship was held on 27th September 2024.
Mihikaa Jain is a business development associate in San Francisco Bay Area, wherein she spearheads business partnership establishment and corporate strategy for biotech startup, particularly in the cell & gene therapy space.
Mihikaa is an IIT Kanpur Alumnus, and a BTech graduate in Bioengineering from department of Biological sciences and Bioengineering, BSBE (2015-2019). During her student days at IIT Kanpur, she was awarded the Academic Excellence Award (2018-19), besides others. Mihikaa undertook a Masters in Translational Medicine, from University of California, San Francisco, and honed her skills in commercialization of new healthcare innovations University of California, Berkeley.
During the interactive session, Mihikaa shared her journey from academia to being part of the biotech startup ecosystem at the bay area. She spoke of the numerous opportunities in the biotech space. She also made aware of the many ways one could be part of the startup ecosystem not only as an inventor one but also as investors of early-stage biotech companies, or as services provider for legal, finance, business strategy, marketing, product design, manufacturing, etc. She also shared how one could be actively engaged in technology transfers in university and academic setups to facilitate spin off IP from academia into startups.
The session ended with a vibrant question-answer session with the students on various aspects of establishing and sustaining startups, with discussion on critical exit strategies in place.
