Despite being a comparatively smaller industry and an alien word to large chuck of Indian masses, the biotechnology still attracts praiseworthy words from policymakers and visionaries. Perhaps its direct connect with food and medicine makes the sector highly relevant to the human race especially when huge sea of challenges stand in way to future.
In this backdrop, the Indian Government’ s Department of Biotechnology( DBT) has drafted a very ambitious strategy with the target to turn biotechnology into a US $ 100bn industry by 2025. The strategy aims to establish India as a world-class bio-manufacturing hub. It intends to launch a major mission, backed with significant investments, for the creation of new biotech products, create a strong infrastructure for R & D and commercialization, and empower India’ s human resources scientifically and technologically.
Indigenous innovation but how?
“ We sometimes have tendency to be self-critical to the extent of policy paralysis,” says Prof VijayRaghavan, Secretary, DBT pointing towards the fact that biotech startup landscape has grown in the country over the previous five years. He elaborates, " The changing ecosystem has been driven by several elements such as public funding agencies, angel funding and VC funding. We are more focused on research and innovation than ever before and it is yielding results. Our job is to be present at every stage of the innovation ecosystem so that we are in a position to support innovators by helping take their idea and proof-of-concept to the market. Institutions such as BIRAC are committed to promoting affordable innovation in key social sectors in order to achieve the larger goal and mission of an innovation-driven Indian Biotech enterprise.”
According to Dr Sarvajna Dwivedi, Global TiESilicon Valley, the immunotherapy, cell therapies and gene editing are huge opportunity areas that need to be capitalized. He calls for adoption of Indian model.“ In our generation, in next 15-20 years, there will be huge unmet medical needs. There is a need to start a movement. The large extent of pharmacological work is on Western population. It might not work on the Indian population. Hence, we cannot afford Western model.“ Swadeshi patents, Swadeshi biopharma is what we need,” he adds.
Policymakers say that over the last 5 years, a foundation has been laid for an innovation driven biotech enterprise in the country.“ The Government is keen on making India the pioneer of innovation. We have jumped 15 places in the Innovation Index and we are now on the way to continued growth in the innovation sphere,” says Mr Y S Chowdary, Minister of State for Science and Technology,“ DBT’ s National Biotech Development Strategy for 2015-2020 has defined the policy outline to achieve the next transition for the Indian biotechnology.”
THE KEY ELEMENTS OF THE INDIA’ S NATIONAL BIOTECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY 2015-20:
• Build skilled workforce and leadership
• Revitalize the knowledge environment at par with the growing bio-economy
• Enhance research opportunities in basic, disciplinary and inter-disciplinary sciences
• Encourage use-inspired discovery research
• A focus on biotechnology tools for inclusive development
• Nurture innovation, translational capacity and entrepreneurship
• Ensure a transparent, efficient and globally best regulatory system and communications strategy
• Foster global and national alliances
• Strengthen institutional capacity with redesigned governance models
• Create a matrix of measurement of processes as well as outcomes
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