Global experience shows that capitalising on research is the most practical way of creating new entrepreneurship and promoting economic growth in a relatively backward industrial environment. For small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), technology incubators provide such opportunities. In India, many biotechnological processes remain on laboratory shelves without entering the market place because of limited scale-up capabilities and resource constraints for technology commercialisation.
Shapoorji Pallonji Biotech Park Pvt. Ltd (SPBP) will be equipped with a Biotechnology Incubation Centre (BTIC), Business Enterprise Zone and commercial manufacturing facilities. The BTIC will be first of its kind in the country to enable Indian biotech companies to translate their research into commercially viable technologies without making large investments.
The SPBP and Government of Andhra Pradesh sought IICT's scientific expertise and design engineering capabilities to set up BTIC in the SPBP premises. The institute has conveyed its willingness to undertake the task. The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, is keen to support such a venture and an expert committee has already been constituted to evaluate the project.
Technologically, the proposed BTIC will be suitably equipped to develop rocess/product technologies related to enzymes, probiotics, antibiotics, organic/ pharma intermediates and recombinant DNA. From functional point of view, the BTIC consists of a research laboratory, multipurpose and specialized pilot plant facilities which can be leased to the clients and service centres for providing administrative, publicity, analytical, material storage, HRD, business development, information and utility support systems to the BTIC tenants.
A Pre-BTIC Process Generation (PBPG) facility is proposed to be set up at IICT to facilitate first level scale-up of laboratory processes (developed either at IICT or elsewhere) to enhance their commercial credibility and to generate pre-feasibility information needed for venture capital funding of BTIC projects. The bench scale investigations at PBPG cover process route selection, flow-scheme development, material/energy consumption, property evaluation, scale-up strategy and equipment selection for BTIC and other technological data generation. This BTIC project is expected to be completed within three years.
The total cost of the proposed project is around Rs 25 crore with financial support from DBT, Government of Andhra Pradesh and SPBP. The BTIC project will be India's first public-private sector joint initiative for biotechnology development, scale-up and commercialization.
-The author is Director, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), Hyderabad