BENGALURU:
The Association of Biotechnology Led Entrepreneurs (ABLE) is now gearing up to organize the two-day event BioEconomy Conclave from January 31 to February 1, 2019 in Bengaluru. The Association sees that it is the Public Research Institutes (PRIs) that will spur the revenue growth of India’s bio-economy to US$ 100 billion by 2025.
More than 200 biotech researchers from public and private laboratories are expected to kick-start a new series of events to build synergies between national centers and private industries to propel the country. The two-day conclave will have 9 sessions dedicated to different segments of BioEconomy and top experts from national laboratories, and biotech research leaders are expected to discuss and strategize together.
“We are planning to initiate a series of industry –PRI meetings that will help both understand and synchronize their complementary strengths. We hope it will collectively improve efficiency and outcomes of the Indian public and private research system,” said Shrikumar Suryanarayan, president, ABLE. According to ABLE’s latest estimates, the national BioEconomy is forecast to cross the US $ 50 billion mark in 2018. Currently, India has about 600 companies active in biotechnology and 1,732 startups have come up in the last 6 years, with investments of over US$ 3 billion.
Dr. K. VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India said “The Indian scientific public research system is one of the largest in the world and has proven to be an important factor in creating a large national indigenous scientific infrastructure. Indian institutes are well recognized for their scientific depth and achievements. The proposed PRIs-Industry meet is a good initiative and will lead to synergies.”
India has a large network of over 300 publicly-funded research laboratories in the fields of agriculture, health, medicines, biotechnology, science, technology, industrial research etc. This has resulted in significant progress and generation of Intellectual Property. Hundreds of innovative products and technology solutions are available in these public laboratories that could be tapped by the fast growing biotechnology industry.
According to Dr Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman of ABLE and CMD of Biocon, “The Indian Biotechnology sector has spearheaded the concept of a Bio-economy. It is shaped by the convergence and rapidly obliterating borders between various technologies, leading to disruptive innovation. This is a time for creating yet another innovation in the way PRIs engage with industry to take new ideas to the market. CSIR provides the ideal platform to create new PPP models that can deliver scope and scale for market specific innovation”.
