Entrepreneurs Turning Towards Biotechnology in India
Voice of Biotecnika – Episode No 53
How often do you perceive a biotech industry as a money-making industry?? And how many of you are taking ‘Make in India’ seriously and extracting the benefits incurred by it??
Don’t underestimate the power of these words- BIOTECH AND MAKE IN INDIA.
Hello and welcome to another interesting podcast from Biotecnika, where we will be highlighting a very interesting and important topic ‘Entrepreneurs are turning towards Biotechnology in India’.
Biotechnology is a very interesting field and where in the world it has already started developing and establishing as a successful profit-making industry in India it is still an emerging field. But if we compare the last two decades of the biotech industry in India, it has undergone a very successful metamorphosis.
It is a scientific field wherein living organisms are used for making products and chemicals used in a wide range of other industries and to the end-users. Thus, it provides one such unique kind of technology that can be strategically used for the B2B and B2C type of business. Slowly and steadily entrepreneurs who are also becoming more aware of the government’s investments and focus
in India are moving towards Biotechnology to earn profit and for the sustainability of their business.The scientific research-based topic requires infrastructure, high-tech equipment, scientific workforce like laboratories and most importantly well-trained manpower for the biotech industry.
One of the major factors that have contributed a crucial push and confidence amongst entrepreneurs to establish a start-up in this field is the new government initiative about ‘Make in India.
Just in the year 2017, there have been massive achievements by DBT in this field:
1.Healthcare
DBT has launched a very interesting program called Innovate in India(I3) program, with a funding of about USD 250 million. It is a very unique program that focuses on promoting India’s bio-pharmaceutical industry majorly concerning the barriers around affordable healthcare. This Government of India flagship program which is in collaboration with World bank encourages entrepreneurship and is implemented by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) which is a Public-Sector Enterprise set up by DBT.
2. Agriculture, Food and Nutrition
India is an agricultural country and most of its economy is dependent upon agriculture which is conserved in rural India. Our government has come up with a very interesting farmer-centric program called ‘Biotech -KISAN’ which aims at scaling up and addressing farming related challenges related to soil, water, and marketing with efficient technology. This program can create a close and helpful collaboration between farmers and that of the scientist.
3. Bioenergy:
Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (HPCL) were transferred with the country’s second-generation Ethanol plant to establish commercial-scale biomass plants based on a technology which was built under the Ministry. With the innovative technology developed by the team at DBT-ICT, the time required for converting biomass to biofuel (4 to 7 days) reduced enormously to just around 18 to 20 hours and it produced about 300 liters of ethanol per ton of biomass. This useful product can be blended with petrol and used efficiently in vehicles as fuels.
4.Environment and sanitation:
DBT with the support and collaboration with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and BIRAC is participating in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in coming up with the range of products that are of utmost necessity like:
– Bioremediation of filthy water used to eliminate organic waste from municipal wastewater. This technology is also used to discard and filter harmful substances from various industries such as mining and distilleries, and the production of biogas and bio-fertilizer.
–River clean-up technologies
–Bio-toilet technologies
5.Industry:
BIRAC has been acting as a ‘VARDAN’ or a ‘BLESSING’ given by the government of India to the booming entrepreneurs in the field of Biotechnology. So far it has supported over 700 biotech companies, research institutes and small and medium scale enterprises which include around 500 start-ups. BIRAC’S Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) program has become one of the largest and successful funding programs that have supported over 230 startups and entrepreneurs.
Looking at the amazing environment created by the government which supports innovative biotech ideas, some superhumans have opened their minds to take up this opportunity and thus have turned into a successful entrepreneur.
You will be very happy to see the money that the Biotech industry has earned over the past few years in India. There were around 1000 biotech startups in India just by the end of 2016 and most of these were established in just the previous 5 years.
Now if you compare these numbers with Australia and the United Kingdom you will be astonished because in the same time period Australia had 470 biotechnology companies and the UK around 3835. And if we look at the net worth of these biotech companies it was around US$11 billion in 2016, which is expected to grow $100 billion by 2025.
A major part of these biotech start-ups is working in the field of medicine like in diagnostics, medical devices, and drugs, but also around 18% are found to be in biotechnology services, 14% in agricultural biotechnology, 3 % in bioindustry and only 1% in bioinformatics.
“I wanted to make sure that India had its own voice heard in the field of biotechnology,” quoted by Anu Acharya who is an inspiring entrepreneur having two start-ups based in Hyderabad named Ocimum Biosolutions and Mapmygenome.
Bengaluru-based biotech start-ups like Pandorum Technologies, Sea6 Energy and Ganit Labs are making news by their extraordinary contribution in the field of the biotech industry. These are a few of the many motivating biotech startups that India harbors.
Wow!! Isn’t it inspiring and motivating that these entrepreneurs are converting their dreams into reality and making a major impact in the world Biotech industry?
So, don’t doubt yourself and start cherishing and building your dream of being a victorious biotech entrepreneur.
Thank you and stay tuned for the next interesting and helpful podcast that Biotecnika will bring to you!!
