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Department of biotechnology (DBT) is keen to promote the creation of the Bengaluru- Boston biotech corridor. The concept came about after the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platform (C-CAMP) in Bengaluru and The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) which had signed a letter of intent to create the US-Indo Life Science Sister Innovation Hub. The pact was inked in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to the Bay Area in September 2015.
Now DBT sees the need for the creation of Bengaluru-Boston corridor and is of the view that the Indian biotech industry will have to stimulate entrepreneurship. It calls to invest in creating a pool of quality talent.
“There is an incredible value when there is an investment made in people. India is known for its vaccine know-how which is achieved because of quality people and technology. The government can invest in high quality centres to serve as a conduit of training. Now the country’s challenge is to grow and become a centre of innovation to tackle problems,” said Prof. K VijayRaghavan secretary, department of biotechnology at the Bangalore India Bio 2016.
“Biotechnology is a knowledge driven sector and a biotech corridor could enable a virtual eco-system. We see Karnataka has the potential to lead. The state has already invested to create an eco-system with research institutes. Now we need to ensure that this eco-system of institutes is linked with the industry. Creation of centres of excellence could enable rapid generation of data and deep domain expertise. These could in-turn be utilised to establish of hundreds of data processing centres that could feed in information to the researchers about the existing details on drug discovery and diagnostic tools,” he added.
The industry needs to strengthen its partnerships with global majors to maximise innovation. There are emerging areas in biotechnology like genomics and predictive medicine where we see scope for entrepreneurs. Amplification of the start-up eco-system can allow constant networking with the best in the world, pointed our Prof. VijayRaghavan.
Bengaluru has a sound capability in bio-similar and therefore creation of molecular labs for the quality analysis of a variety of diseases could support drug discovery and development. For this, there is a need for quality training to cater to the creation of an eco-system. We need to provide room for entrepreneurs to move from middle level to the top at a faster pace. This is possible with if state governments like Karnataka can share a data base of opportunities for the entrepreneurs to pursue, he said.
The state governments and the industry will now need to organise job fairs for PhDs to educate them entrepreneurship on similar lines that it offered to fresh graduates where potential employers participated. In this case, efforts to access database of promising business avenues need to be highlighted. There is also need for mentoring where experts can flag off extraordinary concepts that are viable to take it through regulatory phase.
The Union government is pushing for incubators in a speedy manner. But speed can endanger excellence and therefore experts from industry, research and academia need to mentor and ensure that incubators are training grounds for project excellence. In fact, in India a major success for start-ups is the quality workforce. Therefore for the creation of a Bengaluru-Boston biotech corridor, we need to identify clusters where critical mass is accessible to channel our investments into the eco-system, said Prof. VijayRaghavan.
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