The government of Gujarat is planning to setup a dedicated venture capital fund for biotech industry. The details of the state's biotech-promotion programme are to be worked out at a senior level meeting scheduled next week.
Informing this at a conference hosted by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association with Department of Biotechnology, Narendra Modi, Chief Minister, Gujarat invited biotech entrepreneurs to invest in Gujarat. He promised that the state government will take all steps to facilitate their investment and claimed that Gujarat was best placed to capture a large part of the growing bioinformatics and contract research markets.
In his inaugural address at the International Conference on Bioinformatics and Contract Research, which is one of the three conferences that are being organized as part of Biotech India 2003, Modi called upon all present to make India the global bioinformatics headquarters. He said that this was possible because we could build on our successes in information technology and combine that with our skills in biology and chemistry.
Biotech India 2003 is the largest-ever exhibition on the fast-growing biotechnology industry being held as part of the 15th IETF in New Delhi.
Modi felt that the market for bioinformatics was expected to be $ 10 billion, and India should aim at global dominance in it.
The chief minister focused on the need to invest in five areas of biotechnolgy—pharmaceuticals, agriculture biotechnology, industrial enzymes, and the two new areas of environment biotechnology and marine biotechnology. In the last two, Gujarat both needed investment and had the resources, including the largest coastline of the country.
He emphasized Gujarat's potential in contract research. The state had 40 percent of India's pharma manufacturing sector, many big hospitals, and an entrepreneurial culture. All it needed was some venture financing and Modi announced that the Gujarat government would set up a venture capital fund.
Professor V. S. Ramamurthy, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology gave the keynote address. He said that India had the skilled scientists who could help discover new drugs. What they needed was access to the latest facilities. His department was working towards providing shared facilities that research laboratories could use. Some of them would be made available to private industry on payment of a fee. Professor Ramamurthy emphasized the potential that India's IT prowess could have in boosting our capability in the new area of bioinformatics.
Dr. M. Vidyasagar, Executive Vice President, Tata Consultancy Services made a comprehensive presentation on India's strengths and perceived weaknesses in biotechnolgy in general and bioinformatics in particular. He said that the country had a unique opportunity in the next two to three years in this area, and it should seize it. He said that he favored India taking on its TRIPS obligations on patents this year rather than in 2005, so that foreign investment in this area could increase. He also said that the industry needed an independent organization to lobby for the biotechnology sector. Further, laws and procedures need to be changed to make them more industry-friendly, especially those that inhibited the entry of new seeds and new products.
Summing up, Hari Bhartia, managing director, Jubilant Organosys, said that biotechnology was likely to grow far, but pure bioinformatics company were not doing so well. They needed to be combined with those companies that were doing laboratory research so that the research to develop new data and the analysis of that data was done together. He requested Modi to use his good offices to hasten the debate on agriculture biotechnology so that the farmers began to see the benefits of this new technology, which other countries' farmers were already seeing.