BIRAC Supports Small Biotechs in India.

Through Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), India government offers a number of funding initiatives for small an medium sized Biotechs.

Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), mandate is to take discovery forward and encourage product development Related Articles 10 point guide to BIRAC funding for businesses in India Public funding zooms past $650 mn for Indian life science Industry-academia meet focuses on innovation in India International bioenergy summit kicks off in New Delhi Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a not-for-profit company of Government of India, has been set up with the idea to serve as a single window for emerging biotech industries. The mandate is to take discovery forward and encourage product development by indigenous biotechnological companies.

There are a number of initiatives that provide funding opportunities to small an medium sized companies in the country. The following are some of the initiatives introduced by the government to push the biotechnology industry:

Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG)

BIRAC offers Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) to scientist entrepreneurs from research institutes, academic private sector and start-ups who have exciting ideas in nascent or planning stages. This scheme is designed to stimulate commercialization of research discoveries by providing very early stage grants for the development and maturation of those discoveries into marketable product or intellectual property (IP), in particular to help bridge the gap between discovery and invention.

The purpose of the BIG Scheme is to upscale and validate of proof of concept; encourage researchers to take technology closer to market through a start-up; and excite interest of potential licensees or investors.

Biotechnology Industry Partnership Programme (BIPP)

Biotechnology Industry Partnership Programme (BIPP) is a government partnership with Industries for support on a cost sharing basis for path-breaking research in frontier futuristic technology areas having major economic potential and making the Indian industry globally competitive. It is focused on IP creation with ownership retained by Indian industry and wherever relevant, by collaborating scientists.

BIPP supports the development of appropriate technologies in the context of recognized national priorities in the area of agriculture, health, bio-energy, green manufacturing, when the scale of the problem has serious consequences for social and economic development. BIPP is an advanced technology scheme only for high risk, transformational technology or process development. It is for high risk futuristic technologies and mainly for viability gap funding. The uniqueness of this scheme is that it is for "breakthrough research" that enables product and process development and is patentable, with IP ownership rights resting with industry.

Indian Biotech companies regulated under Indian Company Act 1956 with 51% Indian shareholding (including NRI's) who have DSIR recognized R&D are entitled for BIPP funding, either independently or in collaboration with companies, not for Profit organisation or academics partners. So far 88 agreements have been signed with 72 companies involving aprrox. 50 startups and SMEs. Scheme provides for both soft loan and grant. A total of investment of US $ 141m has been committed with US $ 50m by Govt. of India with a matching contribution of US$ 91m coming in as private sector contribution.

Small Business Innovation Research Initiative (SBIRI)

The Small Business Innovation Research Initiative (SBIRI), a scheme launched in September, 2005 by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), aims to encourage small and medium scale industries to take up risk in innovative R&D in biotech sector. The main focus is on supporting proof of concept and early stage research in start-ups and SMEs. Over 100 projects from small and medium entrepreneurs have been supported. SBIRI has deployed $36 million, of which $5 million in grants and $31 million in soft loans, with a debt-to-grant ratio of roughly 6 to 1. Public SBIRI funding has leveraged an additional $33 million in private investment by recipient enterprises as their core contribution, for a total investment of $69 million across approved projects.

Contract Research Scheme (CRS)

BIRAC extends support to academia in the form of grant-in aid for validation of the proof of concept by an industrial partner. It supports the academia-industry interaction between research institutes, universities, public funded research laboratories, governmental organizations, research foundations and companies or industries under the public-private partnership (PPP) mode.

Under this CRS Scheme, public sector research institutes, universities who have already generated or have pre-existing scientifically established proof of concept can seek support for specific research and validation process to be performed by a company partners within a defined time frame. The industry partner in turn would complete the validation phase in a contract research mode. The IP rights belong solely to the academic partner.

Bio-incubator Support Scheme (BISS)

In order to foster techno entrepreneurship in biotechnology, BIRAC has initiated a scheme for strengthening and upgradation of the existing bio-incubators and also to establish new world-class bio-incubators in certain strategic locations. These bio incubators will provide the incubation space and other required services to start-up companies for their initial growth.

The BIRAC Bio-incubator strengthening support is provided to those existing Incubators which have proven experience and competence to run successful incubators, have an existing network for mentoring and handholding of incubatees, and also can provide the enabling services to promote innovation research. This apart, BIRAC is will set up a limited number of new world-class state-of-the-art national bio-incubators at strategic locations, especially in and around the DBT Bio-clusters.

Grand Challenges Programme


BIRAC will also shortly launch the Grand Challenges Programme, offering researchers and scientist opportunities to innovate and work on scientific and technological solutions for affordable product development to meet national needs. The program will have one common defined goal: "Create scientific and technological tools to overcome hurdles and find solutions for novel affordable products of national relevance". High level of innovation, new tools and transformative ideas would be supported. These could be in health care, agriculture and energy.

These Grand Challenges Programs could be implemented in an industry-academia partnership model to be co-funded with strategic partners through both national and global alliance. These could be self-governed consortia with clearly defined milestones, deliverables, management models and IP sharing contracts.

India to Get World-Class Agri-Biotech Research Institute.

The Indian Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology will be established at a cost of $51 million.

New Delhi: The Union Cabinet of India has approved a proposal of the Ministry of Agriculture for the establishment of an Indian Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology (IIAB) in Ranchi, Jharkhand. The institute, under the Department of Agricultural Research (DARE), will come up at the cost of approximately $51 million (Rs 287.50 crore) during the 12th Five Year Plan.

The setting up of the institution is in keeping with the government's efforts to boost farm productivity to meet the needs of a growing population. As the net cultivable area of 142 million hectares in the country is not likely to increase, an increase in production per hectare is the only way to meet the demand. The mandate of the institute will be to undertake multidisciplinary research to develop crops with traits such as increased yield or increased tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress.

As a mother institute, it will provide both curricula and course material to India's agricultural universities currently running or trying to establish successful agricultural biotechnology graduate and post graduate programs. As a deemed university, it will include schools for genomics, bioinformatics, genetic engineering, nano biotechnology, diagnostics and prophylactics, basic and social sciences and commercialization. The institute will be involved in design and start academic programs to develop the highly trained manpower required for fundamental research in agricultural biotechnology, and award post graduate doctoral and post-doctoral degrees.

It will provide research output to breeders and developers in agricultural universities and other institutions to develop the germplasm and vaccines that would enhance productivity and reduce losses due to biotic and abiotic stress.

India Biotech to be $125 billion gorilla by 2025

A government-industry joint report has predicted that India’s emerging Biotechnology will become a $100 billion giant from its current $4 billion level by the year 2025.

Bangalore: "A dynamic and vibrant Biotechnology industry would be one of the main engines of innovation in India and will establish the country as a global destination for innovation with economic spillover effects such as creation of a large Biotechnology manufacturing industry, high technology skilled jobs and supporting an ancillary industry that feeds the innovation engine," summed up a report commissioned by Indian government's federal Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and prepared by the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE).

The 2025 industry revenue number has been extrapolated from the 2012 BioSpectrum-ABLE Biotech Industry Survey, which revealed that the sector had a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24 percent since 2003. With some more support from the government with more favourable policies, the industry could grow at a CAGR of 30 percent or more in the next decade. This will nudge it past the $100 billion mark by 2025, predicts the report.

"The potential for India to be a global innovation hub, especially in Biotechnology, exists. The Indian Biotech industry has also shown that when proper support systems exist, they can deliver scaled up innovative products that are affordable and are of high quality," says Dr Satya Dash, who authored the report, 'Indian Biotechnology: The Roadmap to the Next Decade and Beyond', early this year as the chief operating officer of ABLE.

Dr M K Bhan, secretary, DBT, added that, "The government has established several innovative industry focused schemes, such as SBIRI, BIPP and the Ignition Grant. These programs are helping the industry to proactively incorporate innovation as the driving force for R&D, enabling the industry to build capacity for future growth and are creating platforms for positive collaborations between industry and academia for translational biology." 

Of course, this is not going to happen if the business as usual scenario continues. An institutional and structural framework has to be built to help the country achieve its potential as a break out nationa for Biotechnology innovation.

According to the report, the five guiding principles the government should follow to make this happen are: 

1. Create a strong, streamlined and regulatory foundation that fosters innovation. 

2. Reshape and build government infrastructure to build capacity for research and development and facilitate translation and commercialization potential. 

3. Facilitate technology access as well as market access for innovation products to achieve scale through public procurement. 

4. Promote Biotech entrepreneurship and provide a channel to access risk capital for all stages of biotechnology product lifecycle. 

5. Nucleate and foster networks and triple helix collaborations.

One of the key suggestions is to set up a "Centre for Biotechnology Policy and Regulatory Sciences" on the lines of the Institute for Manufacturing in University of Cambridge, UK, which brings together all the elements of regulation, policies, industry-government interactions, academia-industry interactions and business strategy. The report has also called for setting up fully equipped technology transfer offices in all science and technology research centers. 

The government has declared this to be the Decade of Innovation. " Biotechnology is synonymous with innovation," commented Dr Vijay Chandru, who headed ABLE from 2009-12 and Dr P M Murali, current president of ABLE in their foreword in the report. "The innovation imperatives are clear enough - biosimilars and diagnostics for affordable healthcare, integrated traditional medicine, green biotech for less dependence on petroleum, bioremediation for environmental recovery, agricultural productivity and value addition, leapfrogging with genomics, synthetic biology and biomedical informatics." 

In the past decade, India's Biotech industry has come into its and laid the foundations for the future. It is time now to build on these foundations and embrace the future strong commitment focused on innovation.

Will Biotechnology Get its Due in West Bengal?

Life sciences industry needs greater push in the home state of India's 13th president, Mr Pranab Mukherjee.

The promise of change swept over West Bengal, a state in the eastern part of India with its capital in Kolkata, in 2011 when Ms Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress pulled off a victory over the Left in the state elections. Now, with Mr Pranab Mukherjee taking on the mantle of the President of India, focus is back on the state from which he hails and has served as an elected member of Parliament for many decades. 

Industrial growth, which has been almost negligible in West Bengal for many years, will take some time to match the pace of other industrially forward states of the country. The state was burdened with debt of $ 40 billion (Rs 2,08,382.58 crore) as on March 31, 2012, according to the state's Finance Minister Mr Amit Mitra. 

The life sciences industry, which has been the growth driver in many states such as Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Haryana because of initiatives taken by their governments since 2000, will need greater push to make its mark in West Bengal. The state has over 700 small and medium pharmaceutical companies but they have failed make their presence felt till now. 

The Department of Science and Technology, Government of West Bengal, came up with the first draft of a Biotechnology policy in December 2001 to promote the niche industry. Later, in 2006-7, the government set up a separate Department for Biotechnology in the lines of the Department of Biotechnology at the central level. The Department of Biotechnology relaunched the draft Biotechnology policy in 2008 to give new impetus to developments in the field of traditional as well as modern Biotechnology in West Bengal. 

In the last few years, the Biotechnology space in West Bengal has seen some growth. The department is promoting Biotechnology in the state through several R&D projects, demonstrations and creation of infrastructural facilities. There have been some achievements in growth and application of Biotechnology in broad areas of agriculture, healthcare, animal sciences, environment and industry.

Mr Pranab Mukherjee, sworn in as the 13th president of India on July 25, 2012, announced various provisions for the Biotechnology industry as the country's finance minister earlier this year. This year's budget extended a 200 percentage weighted tax deduction to companies for research and development (R&D) expenses till March 31, 2017, apart from allocating around $1 billion (Rs 5,000 crore) to Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) to help small Biotech companies looking to raise capital from the new stock exchange for small and medium enterprises.

Other initiatives announced included allocation of $40 million (Rs 200 crore) for the development of new technologies for seeds and plants and a grant of $70 million (Rs 350 crore) to agriculture universities across the country, which will ensure that the benefits of technology in agriculture reach the citizens of the country. Some of these measures received mixed response from the Indian biotechnology industry but are not entirely without promise, said experts.

The West Bengal government has set up the Kolkata Biotech Park, which is in operation since March 2011. Besides, other Biotech parks have also come up to encourage the industry. Bose Institute has developed the Jagadish Chandra Bose Biotechnology Park at Madhyamgram with focus on plant and agricultural biotechnology. Similarly, West Bengal University of Technology has developed the EKTA Incubation Centre in Kolkata, which has been recognized by the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India. Nine companies are presently operating from the incubation center in areas such as Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, IT-embedded systems, software development and materials science and other engineering.

The state has many companies operating in the pharmaceutical space, but has very few in the Biotechnology space. TCG Life Sciences, formerly Chembiotek Research International, is a leading company in the Biotech space with revenue of $100 million (Rs 500 crore). Some of the other Biotech companies operating in the state are Emami Biotech, Chembiotek, DSR Genome Technologies, Amit Biotech, Krish Biotech Research and Subhasree Biotech. DSR Genome Technologies, a Biotechnology company set up by Prof S K Dey, director of Biotechnology Department, West Bengal University of Technology, has been involved in development and marketing of diagnostic kits for post-natal and prenatal diagnosis of common chromosomal disorder.

The Department of Biotechnology is also developing a Biotechnology Park under public-private partnership model at Kharagpur in association with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, a premier institution of engineering and technology in India. The project has been allotted 100 acres of land. In addition to support for infrastructure development, the department has given financial assistance to more than 15 projects in bioinformatics, biofuels, tissue culture and other societal development programs.

The state government has been making efforts to facilitate the growth of Biotechnology industry and development of clean Biotech technologies. But only time will tell whether the Biotechnology industry will emerge as a growth engine for the state under the leadership of Ms Banerjee and Mr Mitra, who has previously held the post of secretary-general of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and took the federation from $540,000 (Rs 3 crore) to $20 million (Rs 110 crore) during his tenure.

Indian Scientists Vehemently Support GM Technology

In a first of its kind show of strength for genetically modified technologies, the Indian scientific agencies have jointly come forward to ask government for early implementation. 

New Delhi: A recent event held by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to discuss about the cultivation of genetically modified crops, concluded with the participating scientists expressing their support for GM technology. 

The event brought together several departments of the Government of India, including the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Department of Environment and Forests (DoEF), and Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAC), and saw participation of over 40 senior eminent scientists, technocrats and bureaucrats.

The group felt that there is a need to produce more food owing to the limited soil and water resources, and with the burgeoning population expecting to reach 1.5 billion by 2025. The group also felt the necessity of jointly facing all the challenges being witnessed by Indian agriculture. It appreciated taking into cognizance all kinds of new sciences and technologies to meet the challenges, using traits such as tolerance to various biotic and abiotic stresses, improved nitrogen uptake and its efficient use and enhanced nutritional status of grains to address malnutrition in developing countries like India. 

The group emphasized that such new technologies will help farmers to produce more and conserve their valuable natural resources leading to the practice of sustainable agriculture in the truest sense. It was emphasized that the success of Bt cotton technology in India should be an eye opener for all stakeholders to move forward in addressing the needs of future agriculture. 

The meeting resolved to make use of the collective wisdom of the stakeholders from different backgrounds in addressing the issues being faced in nurturing science-led agriculture development in India.