The Union government will have to increase its investments in science and technology. Currently, India indicates sub-optimal investment in science and technology compared to Korea, said Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, head, Vision Group on Biotechnology, government of Karnataka and chairman and managing director, Biocon.

The 16th edition of Bangalore India Bio which had Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union minister for science & technology and earth sciences as the chief guest, saw the Vision Group chief take the opportunity to highlight that the sector of science and technology is the future. There is need to leverage science to augment GDP growth.

“The government will need to see that investments are increased because this is the only sector that can give a demographic dividend for India. Korea is way ahead in the allocation of funds for the science and technology sector,” she pointed out.

The Vision Group chief also indicated the importance of incubators and called upon the Union government to set up incubators at all Universities in the country as this was seen to be base for start-ups to enable scale-upto pilot stage.

With the Union government unveiling Make in India, Innovate in India, Skill in India and Start-up India programmes, the Vision group chief said that with regards to vaccine and biosimilar manufacturing, the sector had proved its indigenization capability. In the area of vaccines, one in three of these for the world were already manufactured from India. We now need to innovate new drugs. The country sees itself to play a dominating role in generics and biosimilars too, she said adding that The country and Karnataka specifically had the capability in Bio-IT. Therefore, start-up needs to build businesses because the future augurs well for biotechnology. The venture capitalists are enthused on the eco-system and keen to nurture companies to scale up operations.

Biotechnology industry can thrive with partnerships with other countries and therefore the sector will need to leverage its future growth on collaborations. This could speed up the pace to innovate.

“We see India has a lots to offer in innovation and affordability. Globally, human capital is expensive to access. The country has high quality science and scientists. Now this talent needs to be leveraged for global collaborative pursuits. This is where we see the need for the Union government to increase its investments in science and technology because currently India has a sub-optimal investment in science and technology compared to Korea, she said.