NEST 2.0 – Nurturing Excellence, Strengthening Talent

About Novartis: 

Novartis is a focused innovative medicines company. Every day, we work to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives so that patients, healthcare professionals and societies are empowered in the face of serious diseases. Our medicines reach more than 296 million people worldwide.

About Novartis in India:

Novartis has partnered India's healthcare journey since 1947. Today, India is one of the few countries in the world where Novartis has Research, Development, Commercial and Operations continuum. Our footprint includes Novartis Corporate Center and Genome Valley sites (Global Capability Center housing Biomedical Research, Development, and Operations teams) in Hyderabad and Novartis International (commercial operations) headquartered in Mumbai. In 2024, we also added a Development India Hub site in Mumbai.

We have two legal entities namely: Novartis Healthcare Private Limited and Novartis India Limited with over 9000 employees and a 38% diversity. We have been consistently recognised as a Top Employer in the country, are a certified Great Place to Work^® and recently earned a spot among Best Workplace in Asia™ 2025.

Every day, we work to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives with our portfolio of innovative and established medicines in therapeutic areas including cardiovascular, oncology, immunology, eye care, and neurosciences. 

About Novartis Corporate Center

We were among the pioneers when we setup a Global Capability Centre in Hyderabad nearly two decades ago. Today, there are six such centers across the world, strategically spanning different time zones. Recently, named as the Novartis Corporate Centers (NOCC), the one located in Hyderabad is the largest and is fueling our purpose of reimagining medicine.

The centre is key to Novartis’ vision and provides high–quality support service across multiple functions and capabilities – Biomedical Research, Drug Development, Business Services, Data, Digital & IT, Manufacturing Supply and Quality, Procurement & Real Estate, Human Resources, Finance, Risk & Compliance, Legal, Communications & Engagement. We are one of the very few GCCs who have gone beyond the conventional tech-heavy presence to diversify into other areas where the talent pool availability in India can be tapped to drive enterprise value at scale.

About Novartis Development India Hub

The Novartis Global Development division is responsible for advancing our pipeline of investigational medicines, to bring transformative new treatment options to patients with serious diseases. It leads the clinical development of potential new medicines, running large clinical trials and generating evidence that turns molecules to medicines. The key hubs of this division are in Switzerland (Basel), the USA (East Hanover); and India (Hyderabad and Mumbai). The Development hub in India works on supporting global development projects to generate evidence and convert molecules to medicines.

The India hub has evolved over more than 20 years and today sees three vibrant state-of-the-art centres across two cities, Hyderabad - at the Novartis Corporate Center (NOCC) and Genome Valley, and a recent one in Mumbai. Today, the India hub is an important base to support the development journey of many breakthrough medicines across all therapy areas (cardiovascular renal metabolic, oncology, immunology, neuroscience). The India center supports all global functions including Global Clinical Operations, Technical R&D, Patient Safety and Pharmacovigilance, Regulatory Affairs, Advanced Quantitative Science, to name a few. The vast footprint of the Development division in India (~2,800 employees) is instrumental in supporting the company’s long-term growth and delivering on its purpose to improve and extend people’s lives.

For over 15 years, Novartis Technical R&D (TRD) has been increasing its footprint in Genome Valley, Hyderabad and currently 300+ scientists including Masters, PhDs and post doctorates are supporting the pharmaceutical development of new chemical entities.  The Indian scientists are providing support in the development of many chemical entities aligned with our focus therapies. The India hub provides impetus to bright leaders and also deepens its focus on drug development work.

*All Data as of May 2025

Eligibility: 

• Participants can register in teams comprising 1 to 4 members.
• For teams advancing to Round 2, it is mandatory to have a faculty mentor affiliated with the same institute or any other who will guide them in developing a working solution for the given use cases. The total team size, including the faculty mentor, must not exceed five members. 
• All final and pre-final year students are eligible to participate in this engagement. 
• Cross-organization teams are allowed. 
• Cross-specialization teams are allowed. 
• A participant cannot be a member of more than one team. 
• Any deviation from the aforementioned rules will result in the immediate disqualification of the entire team. 

Competition Structure:

AMA Session 1

• An interactive Ask Me Anything session connects teams with mentors and organizers for real-time guidance.
• This will help participants understand the problem statements, overall structure, and guidelines, and to prepare them for abstract submission in the Innovation Challenge Submission Round.

Round 1: Innovation Challenge Submission Round

• In this phase, all registered teams are required to submit an abstract deck in PDF or PPTX format that clearly presents their approach and methodology, model choice and setup, model training and evaluations, results and visualizations, and challenges and next steps.
• If a team chooses multiple problem statements, they must submit separate abstract decks for each one.
• This stage emphasizes clarity, feasibility of the proposed direction, and alignment with the evaluation criteria so reviewers can assess both innovation and practicality.
• Maximum Slides (Report): 5
• Evaluation Criteria
  • All submissions will be reviewed by a panel of domain experts.
  • Teams will be shortlisted based on:
    • Problem Understanding & Solution Design
    • Approach & Methodology
    • Feasibility & Practical Application
    • Quality, Clarity, and Depth of Presentation

AMA Session 2

• An interactive Ask Me Anything session will be conducted for the teams shortlisted for the semi-finals.
• This session will focus on helping teams refine their working solutions through mentor-led discussions on model optimization, result interpretation, and presentation clarity.
• Participants will gain valuable insights to enhance the quality, robustness, and storytelling of their submissions for the upcoming round.

Round 2: Semi-Finals — Working Solutions Submission

• The shortlisted teams must submit their final solutions in a specified format to ensure consistency and ease of evaluation.
• For teams advancing to Round 2, it is mandatory to have a faculty mentor affiliated with the same institute or any other who will guide them in developing a working solution for the given use cases. 
• Each solution should be packaged into a single zip file containing a detailed report and all the code necessary to reproduce the results, along with clear documentation of assumptions, approach, and how outcomes map to defined success metrics.
• Building on the abstract, teams should present end-to-end execution, including model setup and training, evaluations aligned to stated metrics, results and visualizations, error analysis, known limitations, and proposed next steps.
• The submission should be reproducible, well-structured, and transparent to facilitate rigorous review.
  
  

Round 3: Mentorship

• The shortlisted finalist teams (9-15) shall undergo mentoring by our panel of experts to prepare for a final pitch to the Novartis leadership and SME panel.
• During this stage, teams are expected to:
  • Enhance their proposed solutions based on mentor feedback
  • Deepen their analysis and technical execution
  • Prepare for the final presentation round
• This round is designed to help participants bridge the gap between concept and implementation, ensuring that their ideas are both innovative and practically viable.

Round 4: Grand Finale

• The finalist teams (9-15) will be invited to the Novartis Hyderabad Campus for the final pitch presentations.
• The teams will pitch their ideas offline in front of an expert panel of judges, providing a unique opportunity to showcase their innovation, strategy, and potential in a dynamic, face-to-face setting. 
• This round will test not only the strength of your idea but also your team’s ability to communicate and defend your vision under real-time scrutiny. 

What’s in it for you? 

• All national finalists based on the assessment and purely on merit, may qualify to receive cash prizes from a total pool of INR 7,50,000 across all problem statements.*
• All the National Finalists may get an opportunity to win PPIs from the Novartis team based on the evaluation criteria and at the sole discretion of Novartis.
• Selected teams may get an opportunity to collaborate with Novartis on co-creating a solution, post-evaluation and closure of the competition.
• Cash prize money is subject to applicable tax deductions.

*Terms & Conditions Apply. Refer to the T&C Document.