The world witnessed India’s quest to combat COVID-19 not just strategically, economically, socially and with regard to health provisions and hospitality, but also bio-technologically as it came up with many successful vaccines. This is no mean feat for a country which had been considered very poor in the domain of research, especially bio-technology and medicine. Now, it seems it is a different world out here. Today, PM Narendra Modi inaugurated the two-day Bio-Tech Startup Expo 2022 being held in New Delhi. Further, India recently saw inauguration of the National Facility for Gene Function in Health and Disease (NFGFHD) in Pune. In Parallel, North India’s first biotech park was inaugurated in J&K’s Kathua along with the launch of a Single National Portal For Biotech Startups by Union Minister of State For Science and Technology Dr. Jitendra Singh. In a recent development, IISC scientists have also designed a new class of artificial peptides or miniproteins that they say can render viruses like SARS-CoV-2 inactive. With such a motivated and encouraging developments, India is beaming with bio-technological breakthroughs, slowly forming a favorable ecosystem for both research and innovation in the country.
Prospects are galore for the sector as it is one of the most demand driven sectors. The campaigns for ease of living in India over the years, have opened up new possibilities for the biotech sector. The developments in health, agriculture, energy, natural farming, bio-fortified seeds are creating new avenues for it. However, we still need to work on the efficiency and productivity and cost-effectiveness of agriculture, nutritional security, molecular medicine, environmentally sustainable technologies, scientific and technological empowerment of human resource, a strong infrastructure for research and commercialization, the relevant knowledge base, nurturing the leads of potential utility and bringing the bio-products to the market place to take the sector to new heights.
Five big reasons why India is being considered a land of opportunities in the field of biotech are- its diverse population and diverse climatic zones, talented human capital pool, increasing efforts for ease of doing business, the demand for bio-products and the track record of its success. Furthermore, to transcend government-centric approach, the Centre is encouraging a culture of providing new enabling interfaces. Platforms like BIRAC are being strengthened. The government, through new institutions, is bringing together the best minds of the industry on a single platform. Trust in the skill and innovation of India’s IT professionals in the world is at new heights. The country gets new breakthroughs from research and academia, with the industry helping in what is a real world view and the government providing the necessary policy environment and necessary infrastructure.
The encouraging initiatives being continuously taken by India for the sector, has manifested in creating robust startup ecosystem in biotech sector also. In the last 8 years, the number of biotech start-ups in the country has increased to more than five thousand. While, the total number of startups of all kinds, has risen to 70 thousand from a few hundreds in last 8 years (operating in about 60 different industries). This way every 14th startup operates in the bio technology sector with more than 1100 such biotech startups emerging last year itself. The shift of talent towards the sector induces a great deal of investment, resulting in the number of investors being risen by 9 times and biotech incubators and funding for them being increased by 7 times. The number of biotech incubators has increased from 6 in 2014 to 75 now. Biotech products have also increased from 10 to more than 700 today.
A frontline area of science with immense potential for the benefit of the human kind, biotechnology sector is helping to heal the world by harnessing nature’s unfathomable potential and people’s very complex genetic makeup. By reducing rates of infectious disease, it is saving millions of lives and changing the odds of life-threatening conditions by tailoring treatments to minimize the health risks and side effects by creating more precise tools. These are the reasons why India’s bio-economy has grown 8 times in the last 8 years and from 10 billion dollar to 80 billion dollar. More importantly, India is not too far from reaching the league of top-10 countries in Biotech’s global ecosystem.
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