Indian Biotech Investment- potential for "Make in India" Biotech Program

Indian Biotech Investment- potential for "Make in India" Biotech Program

 

India, the darling of the world as far as bio technology sector is concerned offers tremendous opportunities to companies to make investment in the sector in India. Growth of all three areas of bio technology- medicinal, agricultural and industrial and conducive climate for the same make India as one of the ideal destination for world investment flow in India. Following are a few areas where opportunities exist for India:

Vaccines: India’s huge and growing population makes it among the world’s largest markets for vaccines of all types. India faces a growing demand for new-generation and ‘combination’ vaccines, such as DPT with Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A and injectable polio vaccine, besides several veterinary and poultry vaccines. Apart from conventional vaccines, the rDNA have further market potentials and offer great opportunities to companies in the economy.

Medicinal discovery: Opportunities exist for enhancing production facilities and economies of scale based on licensing, joint ventures, setting up of new production bases and establishing royalty sharing arrangements for all therapeutic and medicinal products approved for marketing in India, namely Insulin, Alpha, Interferon, Hepatitis B surface antigen based vaccine, Erythropoietin, Streptokinase, Chymotrypsin, and others.

Agriculture sector: Hybrid seeds, including genetically modified seeds such as Bt cotton represent new business opportunities based on yield improvement, and development of a production base in biopesticides and biofertilisers would facilitate India’s entry into the growing organic or natural foods market. The Genetically Modified crops like corn, cotton, millet, mustard and other nutritionally improved vegetables also provide good potential in the agriculture sector and also leads to improvement in farm produce and productivity per hectare.

Medicinal Research: New research and developments in the field make India as a hub of cutting edge technology for development of new products and medicines having ready and developed market for the same. Indian pharmaceutical companies possess competitive skills in chemical synthesis and process engineering and extraction technologies, which they can leverage to develop new drugs and formulae. New investment into research and successful defending of patents by a number of Indian companies in ten world markets has opened new vistas of opportunities for Indian companies.

Clinical research and trials: With clinical trials in India costing less than a fraction of what it costs in developed markets, clinical research organizations can seek research and trial projects in India from international companies, provided they are able to demonstrate best international practices and follow up procedures.

Bioinformatics: Indian bioinformatics companies can play a significant role in critical areas such as data mining, lexican, mapping and DNA sequencing and extraction, molecule design simulation in world market for bilinformatics services. Complex algorithm writing and the use of computational capacities to study the 3D structures of proteins are the main skills required in this arena and India offers good investment opportunities for the same.

Initiatives to promote Biotechnology in India

Keeping in view the tremendous opportunities offered by various facets of biotechnology sector for the development of nation and addressing issues of food security, agricultural production and yield, industrial pollution and application and medicinal benefits, the Indian Government has taken a number of initiatives to promote the growth of the biotechnology sector in India.

An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGOM) while considering the provisions of setting up of Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and the SEZ Act and Rules has relaxed provisions in terms of both the land area and built-up area requirement for biotechnology sector to the tune of 10 hectares and 40,000 square metres. This would encourage entrepreneurship, innovation and greater participation of small investors in the areas of biotechnology in general and health and agriculture in particular.

The Government has taken special measures to promote the Biotechnology industry and to facilitate increase in turnover of biotech sector. Initiatives have been taken to provide an enabling environment for industrial growth such as exemption of biotech sector from compulsory licensing; permitting 100 per cent FDI in the sector, reducing the area of SEZ to bring it at par with IT sector; providing fiscal incentives to in-house R&D recognized industries in terms of exemption of custom duty on capital goods, reduction in import duty and 150 per cent weighted deduction against expenditure incurred on in-house R&D.

Department of Biotechnology is also supporting R&D and technology development, both in the public and private sector, for developing products and processes which provide affordable biotechnology solutions to the growing food insecurity and health problems and issues.

R&D in agriculture biotechnology is being supported to develop improved crop varieties resistant to abiotic and biotic stress, specially drought. Salt resistant transgenic rice has been developed and is currently under field trial. Bio fortification of important staple crops such as rice, wheat and maize for enhancing macronutrients such as iron and zinc has been initiated. The country also participated in the International Rice Genome Programme with ten other countries. Full sequence of rice genome has been completed. It is expected that the decoded rice genome will help in the discovery of gene and DNA makers for development of improved varieties.

In the health sector, research is continuing for developing low cost and affordable solutions for public health. A number of vaccines and diagnostics have been developed which are under different stages of trial. Diagnostics for HIV, Japanese Encephalitis have been transferred to industry. Rota virus vaccine is in the advanced stages of trial along with the industry. Programmes have also been supported for developing identified drug targets for treatment of communicable/non-communicable