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It won't be long before India’s biotech sector will lead the world. But like every segment, the biotech industry in the country should ensure value creation, scale and size, said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Hon. non-executive chairperson, ABLE and founder, chairperson Biocon Group.
India is underinvested in research and development and it is time to invest more in R&D. The lab to market journey has to be on commercialisation at scale. Start-ups have to think big. At the moment, start-ups are dwarfed. We have to make them think big to solve problems, she added.
Indian biotech is at an exciting phase. Karnataka has 8,000 start-ups in the lifesciences space which is encouraging and inspiring. We want many of these start-ups to scale-up to become successful global biotech enterprises. I have always had a lot of faith and belief that India’s biotech sector will lead the world at some stage, noted Shaw.
The bioeconomy is all about being human centric going by the focus on technology. Even on the geo-political front, the attention on technology deployment has taken centre-stage.
We need to double the investment in academia and industry. There is a need to create the missing link between academia and industry research too, Shaw pointed out.
The biotech industry in India across pharma, bio services, bio agri, bio-energy among others needs to move towards value creation and innovative to come out with disruptive research solutions. The industry needs to showcase its capability and the challenges that they are facing which need to be solved.
Coming to Karnataka which has been a strong partner in the biotech world, the state government here has supported many institutions and one such is the IBAB (Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology) and Centre for Human Genetics are a testimony to this. Even start-ups and incubators have received the desired attention. Therefore, Karnataka is a model state and most of the innovation is taking place here. It is now a magnet for companies to do research going by the qualified talent pool of biotech companies.
It is time for Indian biotech companies to get every obstacle out of its way. So that we can unleash the potential that we have in this sector as India is poised to lead the world in biotechnology, said Shaw.
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