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Backbone of Success
NP Solutions Wins Wharton Business Plan Competition Grand Prize with Next Generation
Back Pain Treatment
An injection to treat
lower back pain won first prize at this year's
Wharton
Venture Finals, the culmination of the school's yearlong Business
Plan Competition. The victory by NP Solutions continued a recent trend
of life-sciences ventures winning the annual event. For winning the top
prize, the members of the NP Solutions team will receive the $20,000
as well as $10,000 worth of legal and accounting assistance from several
prominent Philadelphia firms.
The other top plans included a semi-conductor startup, a renewable energy
venture and a proposed chain of high-end candy stores.
NP Solutions would seek to treat the large pool of patients suffering
from degenerative disc disease with an injectable hydrogel that's
less invasive than other surgical treatments for lower back pain. The
treatment, called RejuvaDisc, is the brainchild of Neil Malhotra, a neurosurgeon
completing his residency at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
In developing the winning plan, Malhotra teamed with Serena Kohli, a
second-year Wharton MBA student, and with Patrick Mayes, Jason Covy,
Peter Buckley, and Brian Bingham, who are doctoral candidates in pharmacology
at Penn's medical school.
Finishing second
and receiving $10,000 the second-place finisher was Nantronics, which
aims to develop low-cost, high-energy memory for integrated circuits
and related devices and market its devices in fast-growing China. Taking
third and a $5,000 prize was Energetica, a startup that would help
tackle America's
energy crisis by converting the methane that brews in U.S. landfills
and wastewater treatment plans into a high-quality fuel.
The Frederick H. Gloeckner Award for the best business plan by a Wharton
undergraduate team went to Foodilly Chocolate Factory, a proposed chain
of retail candy stores that would let customers design their own candy
bars.
The Foodilly team—comprised of Wharton undergraduates Michael Tolkin,
Joshua Feinberg and Eric Lesser—received $5,000 as the Gloeckner winners.
The other four finalists were Angiologix, CircuMed Biopharmaceuticals,
Tamara Kanes, and Vektor.
In developing their winning model, the students behind NP Solutions forged a kind of arranged marriage that really clicked, a meeting of the minds between a Penn medical resident—Malhotra—with a new concept that he'd developed in his clinical research, and the group of Wharton and Penn pharmacology students looking toward the area of biotechnology for forming a business plan.
"We had an interest in biotechnology, and Neil had an interest
in finding people with a background in business," said Mayes after
the group learned of its victory.
In creating NP Solutions, Malhotra and the rest of his team homed in
on a potential treatment for an affliction that affects millions of people,
namely lower back pain caused by degenerative disc disease. In his Venture
Finals presentation, Malhotra noted that the cost of treating the most
severe cases has been estimated at $4.87 billion worldwide.
Despite the prevalence of the disease, only a small percentage of patients
receive any type of corrective surgery. That's because current
techniques—including spinal fusion and the first-generation of hydrogel
implants—involve highly invasive operations. Some patients' immune
systems reject the current gel implants.
Malhotra and the NP Solutions team call his technique, developed during
his Penn medical training, "a second-generation solution." His
hydrogel can be injected into a disc with a small needle, avoiding the
pain and disruption of major surgery. The company's cure—RejuvaDisc,
a self-hardening biocompatible polymer—has shown, in preliminary
tests, that it's not prone to rejection by patients' immune
systems.
Although the NP Solutions team have an easy camaraderie and trade jokes
as if they have been together since grade school, they only came together
this year, through membership in a club, the Penn Biotechnology Group.
Malhotra quipped that NP Solutions would start a tuition-reimbursement
plan so that the rest of the team can work on the business while completing
their studies at Wharton.
"I think all of us have the idea that we'd like to stay with it
in some fashion," said Mayes. The company has two patents pending and
is preparing to begin animal testing with RejuvaDisc.
A similar meeting of the minds took place between Nantronics' two
team members, Wharton student Katerina Cai, the team leader, and Frank
Shi, an electrical engineer who developed the firm's semiconductor
technology. Shi, a former engineering professor at the University
of California-Irvine, teamed up with Wharton MBA student Cai when Shi
had posted a message on the Business Plan Competition website, seeking
a partner. "Before Katerina, we had a technical grounding," Shi
said. "We had three or four people, but they were all technical
guys."
Now, the plan is advancing rapidly as a business, with offices established in Silicon Valley and in Shanghai, where Nantronics is targeting the rapidly growing Chinese market for semiconductors used in computers and telecommunications.
In their presentation, Shi and Cai said Nantronics has forged a partnership with SMIC, one of the world's largest integrated-circuit foundries. The startup sees huge potential in the Chinese market for semiconductors with flash memory, which can be electrically erased and reprogrammed.
Like Nantronics, third-place Energetica is already well on its way to becoming an up-and-running business. "This technology is already working in Europe, and I had been working on a similar business idea," explained Peyron, a Wharton MBA candidate.
Energetica's
technology improves the processing of methane from landfills or wastewater
treatment by filtering out more contaminants than earlier-generation
technologies have been able to. Peyron previously had teamed with business
owner Paul Tower, with the goal of creating a full-service U.S.-oriented
vendor.
Peyron and Tower recruited a number of Wharton students to work on the
business plan, including Jed Brawley and Pieter Staelens, who looked
at the financial aspects; Blake Sonnek-Schmelz and Edouard Meylan, who
developed marketing plans; and Xavier Lombard, who studied the business
model in Europe.
Peyron said the award will be a huge boost as Energetica seeks additional
financial backing. "It's like saying that we're on
the right path, that we're thinking the right way," he explained,
adding that the current plan is to incorporate Energetica later this
spring.
The eight finalists were selected after a year-long competition that
started with 150 teams submitting briefs of business ideas. Those ideas
were then refined into more detailed business summaries. Judges selected
25 of the summaries as semi-finalists, and the semi-finalists submitted
full-fledged business plans.
That group was winnowed to the "Great Eight" finalists, who
presented their plans at the Venture Finals before an audience of venture
capitalists, faculty and students. The annual competition is open to
any team that includes a University of Pennsylvania student and is sponsored
and managed by Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs.
Judging the competition were Wharton alumni Madi Ferencz of Magic Sliders,
Jim Lussier of Norwest Venture Partners, David A. Piacquad of Schering-Plough
Corp., Richard Thompson of Adify and Robert Willenbucher of Johnson & Johnson
Internal Ventures.
In the end, there was little question as to the sweetest moment of the competition. That came when members of the Foodilly team—who are seeking to recreate the popularity of such do-it-yourself eateries such as Coldstone Creamery and Cereality—passed out samples of their blended chocolate bars.
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