Exciting New Opportunities Are Emerging In The Indian Biotech Ecosystem

Indian Biotech Ecosystem is riddled with Problems Opportunities

Gaps

The biotech economy is on its way to becoming a $100B industry in the near future. Despite impressive projections, there are still many challenges that it’s participants are facing at an alarming rate – and these challenges need to be addressed. How? Collaboration between current and future bio-leaders to bridge the gaps that exist inside India’s bioeconomy.

Through our various initiatives, we plan to build a comprehensive and holistic approach to these challenges and empower leaders of tomorrow to address them head-on in their professional, academic, and entrepreneurial careers.

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As India aspires to reach a $100 billion bioeconomy by 2025, it is important for India to build a platform for bio-innovators to incubate, conduct research and launch products. Innovative ideas in basic science, translational research, product development, and commercialization in particular are in dire need. 

Unless bio-innovation hubs with enhanced capabilities are given priority, the scientific and tech development in the country are bound to face huge delays in their speed to implementation. More recently, India has joined forces with 40 bio incubators to facilitate further growth of the biotech ecosystem, providing these start-ups with the required technical, business, financial and regulatory mentors.

However, there are other areas where further improvements are urgently needed, including:

1. Revamping education curriculum in colleges

2. Facilitating access to higher quality laboratories for students and innovators

3. Supportive economic and financial ecosystems

4. Industry-Focused Engagement and Events

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Biotech is an ever-changing and intensive enterprise – from a capital, labor, or skill perspective. In particular, the Indian biotech ecosystem is nascent when it comes to the translation of cutting-edge academic insights into entrepreneurial endeavors. For this nascent ecosystem to evolve into a self-sustaining economy, it requires careful grooming and nurturing of the next generation of entrepreneurs. 

Bioentrepreneurship requires the ongoing bridging of different skillsets to acquire funding, manage land & labor capital, facilitate business development, navigate regulatory bottlenecks, and build relationships with public, private, and governmental stakeholders. 

How can young bio-entrepreneurs in India navigate their entrepreneurial journey without losing motivation and insight before their successful enterprise is completed? It’s hard to tell, which is why there is an urgent need to cement a strong relationship between Leaders of Today and Leaders of Tomorrow. 

Ultimately, this GAP is all about fostering an entrepreneurial culture that promotes the ever-growing bioeconomy of India.

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Deeptech has quickly made its way to the new “innovative” field of the 21st century. But what’s all the buzz and hype about, especially with how it relates to biotechnology? Rigorous interdisciplinary scientific progress and hi-tech engineering have created new possibilities that weren’t close to being feasible in the past. The amalgamation of the biochemistry, molecular biology, mechanical engineering, AI, and software fields have made it possible to create new technologies that are uniting expert pools of talent across a diverse range ecosystems – all striving towards one common goal in the life sciences. 

This GAP is all about how deep biotech roots can go in the Indian ecosystem and the potential amazing tech that can come out of it.

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ndia ranks 145th among 195 countries in the quality and accessibility to healthcare – the lowest amongst its neighbouring countries China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan. The concept of Universal health coverage (UHC) is far from becoming a reality. According to WHO, UHC is defined as the ability for all people and communities to have access to promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative healthcare services (based on sufficient quality to be effective). Not only that, it also requires that the use of these services does not expose its participants to any financial hardship.

The primary objectives in order to address this GAP are:

1. Access to healthcare services – everyone who needs services should get them, not only those who can pay for them

2. The quality of health services should be sufficient to improve the health of those receiving the services

3. People should be protected against financial risk, ensuring that the cost of using services does not put people at risk of financial harm

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India produces 11 percent of the total global agriculture and is also home to the world’s highest number of malnourished people. Despite an increasing production of agriculture, per capita, India is on the decline.  

Findings show that the availability of food grain has declined consistently from its peak of 186.19 kg per person in 1991 to its lowest of 146.51 kg in 2013. Climate Change is a major culprit, making it a major threat to India’s agriculture industry in recent years.

As well, India has become victim to the adverse effects of climate change on food production, transportation, storage, distribution systems, rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, extreme weather conditions (such as prolonged droughts & floods), changing soil fertility, and new pest infestations – all of which are major factors contributing to stagnant agricultural growth. India is soon projected to become the world’s most populous nation, with nearly 1.5 billion people. 

As such, is the biotech sector equipped to play a critical role in bridging this GAP of ever-increasing urgent demand? Only time will tell, but what is for certain is it needs to be addressed faster than anyone anticipated.

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While India has taken initial steps to encourage biotech research and commercial applications, inefficiencies in the country’s current regulatory mechanisms and political opposition to biotechnology (spawned by public misgivings) place constrains on the sector’s economic potential. Not only that, India’s convoluted regulatory system is plagued with bureaucratic bottlenecks and redundancies that delay and prevent new products from securing government approval. 

As such, a better regulatory environment and flourishing domestic biotech sector would help India build a foundation and become a more prominent voice in biotech issues on an international scale. At the same time, safety, security, and ethical implications of emerging biotechnology products need careful review with regulations in place to achieve prosperity for all parties involved.