IIT Delhi startup develops technology to manufacture highly affordable antiviral fabric

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi’s incubated startup, Fabiosys Innovations, has developed a technology to manufacture extremely affordable and highly effective antiviral fabric called Fabium.

“After three years of rigorous research and development, Fabiosys Innovations, a deep-tech healthcare startup incubated at IIT Delhi, has developed an extremely affordable high-performance medical textile Fabium, which destroys almost 99.9% of the bacteria and viruses within 30 minutes,” said an official statement from IIT Delhi.

Also Read | IIT Hyderabad developed cost-effective ventilator available for commercial use

The IIT Delhi team has successfully completed large scale manufacturing trials for Fabium in collaboration with a textile industry partner in Delhi-NCR region to ensure that the large scale fabric manufacturing can be done while maintaining its high-efficiency and affordability.

Fabium can be made with any kind of fabric: natural or synthetic; woven, non-woven or knitted. One of the major USPs of Fabium is its natural color, which is 100% white making it suitable for further dyeing, printing, embroidery, and other kinds of designing.

Low-Cost Antiviral Fabric

The fabric is free from formaldehyde and metal nanoparticles, which cause toxicity and irritation to the human body. The fabric is rigorously tested for air permeability, which shows that the Fabium is almost as breathable as regular fabrics, which makes it very useful in applications like masks and coveralls (PPE), where breathability is almost always an issue.

The IIT Delhi startup was founded in 2019 by Yatee Gupta, who is also an IIT Delhi alumnus and working under the mentorship of Professor Samrat Mukhopadhyay from the Department of Textile and Fibre Engineering at IIT Delhi. The duo started exploring Medical Textiles as an emerging Industry in India in 2018 (pre-COVID) and started developing infection-proof fabrics to prevent cross contaminations in hospitals.

Also Read | IIT Mandi start-up uses green tech to convert steel mills waste into useable products

Mukhopadhyay said, “From a philosophical perspective, we are trying to break the public stereotype that high-quality products will always be expensive. We want to make our infection-proof products as easily available and affordable as a bar of soap. Our mission is to manufacture Fabium at large scale in India itself. We are very thankful to the Department of Biotechnology; Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India; IIT Delhi and FITT, which supported this cause during this crucial moment of time.”

Gupta said, “The affordability of Fabium is due to the technology behind it rather than cheap labor cost. A market research done by Team Fabiosys indicates that our cost-effective novel chemical formulation and unique textile processing technology make Fabium® comparatively extremely affordable antiviral fabric. We are receiving encouraging responses from the industry for manufacturing and distribution of Fabium products.”