India should explore biotech funding on similar lines that of the National Institute of Health (NIH), US and Singapore’s Tamasek models, said David Wetherell, president and COO, Burrill Healthcare Venture and Private Equity Funds, USA.
This would be the only way for the country to achieve its targeted $100-billion revenues by 2025 achievable. It is important for India to drive and dominate in innovation, he said during an analysis of the Association of Biotechnology Led Entrepreneurs’ report on the roadmap to the next decade and beyond for the Indian biotech at the Bangalore India Bio 2013.
India has a huge intellectual capital and should now look at NIH’s funding mechanism. For instance, NIH has provided 46,000 grants valued at $30 billion making US way ahead in the area of funding. Now take the example from the South East Asia where Tamasek in Singapore has increased its funding from a mere $1 billion to $200 billion making it the ninth largest sovereign fund globally, stated Wetherell.
“India needs to take a cue from this and gear up to create an evergreen funding model,” said Wetherell.
“By encouraging innovation and start ups, there will be increase in job opportunities where companies could look at hiring five to 30 jobs. There is no reason why India cannot do this. The country will need optimal government intervention and embark on a partnership mode to harness much of its strengths with viable funding models,” he said.
Based on the strength in information technology (IT), India can offer bioinformatics solutions to the world. At present bioinformatics solutions for drug discovery and synthetic biology is crucial and India can take a lead. But here government needs to be a catalyst and draw up short-term and long-term plans, pointed out the Burrill Healthcare Venture chief.