Karnataka's biotechnology park 'Bangalore Helix' has received several partnership enquiries from leading multinational biotechnology companies in Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom, France and United States. The companies are keen to strike a partnership with the Karnataka government to set up 'Bangalore Helix.

The park, which was conceived in 2001 by the state government, had the foundation ceremony held during the Bangalore Bio 2003, which was unveiled by the Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna. But the project would be delayed because of the general elections.

According to officials from the department of information technology and biotechnology of the government of Karnataka, substantial investments are expected from abroad.

The Singapore-based Jurong Town Corporation will design the park in consultation with the authorities concerned here. In the first phase, the park will extend to over 90 acres of land and subsequently, if necessary it will be extended by another 10 acres. The officials dealing with the project are still not clear on the total number of acres allocated for setting up of Bangalore Helix.

DB Inamdar, minister for information technology and biotechnology who has been holding discussions with several multinational companies in this regard, told Pharmabiz.com that the park would provide world class infrastructure. Hence the government decided to accept participation from multinational companies since common facilities would help the speedy growth of the biotechnology sector. DNA sequencing, incubation facilities, special computers and special graphics were needed in biotechnology and providing such facilities was prohibitively expensive.

The multinational companies which partner with the government in providing common facilities, could obviously make use of the park for research and extension apart from production at other specified manufacturing units.

He recalled that the state government ran into problems when it initially proposed to establish the park on the GKVK campus at the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) here in 2002. The opposition parties and the agricultural university raised an objection since it was considered a 'real estate project of the government. However, the sole aim of the government in establishing the park was to provide common facilities to all the companies in the filed and obtain a token payment for the services rendered.

Apart from the multinational companies, which has tentatively agreed to partner with the government there were also several others in the queue to establish research and manufacturing units at the park. The proposal is to allot 0.5 acres of the 10-acre land to each company depending on their scope of activity. Of the Rs.100 crore that the government proposed to invest initially nearly Rs.50 crore would be recovered from the sale of land.

Minister for information technology and biotechnology, Inamdar said that the state was a front-runner in promoting biotechnology and was already in the lead with a turnover of Rs.2,000 crore. With the establishment of the park, the turnover was expected to multiply and the government is confident to achieve a target of Rs.10,000 crore turnover from the sector.

Currently there are around 100 companies in the sector and at least 10 of them are regarded as the major ones. The number of biotechnology graduates was 1,500 in 2001 and it rose to 5,000 in 2003.

Apart from the research and manufacturing units, minister Inamdar said that the Centre for Human Genetics would also be set up here along with the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) that would be shifted from the ITPL in Whitefield.