With a view to spruce up the growth of the biotech industry in the country, the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), set up by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) recently, has launched research and development (R&D) incubation clusters in five centres across India. Through this clusters, the government plans to groom and foster young entrepreneurs and researchers with an ideal platform that will not only provide technical aid for generating ideas with commercialisation potential but also will encourage early stage funding as well.

Interestingly, the Council hopes to encourage researchers to take technology closer to market through a start up, while stimulating the funding from the private sector to support enterprise formation. Dr Renu Swarup, MD, BIRAC informed that considering the difficulty in getting investment from the private investors to aid young entrepreneurs with their start up initiatives it was high time for the government to come out with a way to join hands with the private sector.

“We strongly believe that there is lot of potential that is yet to be tapped from start-ups or academic spin-offs ideas which have a commercialisation potential. Unfortunately for us in spite of all this, there is a lack of confidence among the investors when it comes to investing in the biotech sector, which makes funding the project further is a constant bane for us, this needs to be changed. The government can only support to a certain extend and we have realised that we also need the support and the confidence of the industry and investors to take it ahead from early stage funding. That is how we came up with this plan, we plan to support the numerous exciting ideas which have an unmet need for funding and mentorship. Since the government is directly involved in this project it will give a sense of security and encourage more investors to come forward to support this initiative,” she stressed.

She further pointed out that this strategy is fulfilled through a grant funding scheme called Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) which is available to scientist entrepreneurs from research institutes, academia and start ups. As per the requirement, the applicant must be either an incubatee or have a registered company with a functional R&D laboratory to be eligible for this grant, as the scheme is designed to stimulate commercialisation of research discoveries by providing very early stage grants to help bridge the gap between discovery and invention.

Dr Swarup informed that the call for proposal will be announced twice every year, on January 1 and July 1 and as part of this scheme, successful BIG Innovators receive up to Rs.50 lakh (apporx. $100K) for research projects with commercialisation potential with duration of up to 18 months. The first phase of which has already been flagged off. The BIG Scheme is currently managed through three BIG Partners across the country who works with the Ignition grantees (BIG Innovators) to provide mentoring, monitoring, networking and other business development related activities.

The five biotechnology ignition grant partners are IKP Knowledge Park, Hyderabad, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), Bengaluru, Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer, New Delhi, KIIT Technology Business Incubator, Bhubaneswar and Venture Centre (Entrepreneurship Development Centre), Pune.