Biotech Parks in India: Achievements

August 23, 2008 by dadmin

The biotech sector has grown at an impressive pace in India over the last five years with Biotech Parks making a significant contribution to revenue growth from Biotech industries. The regions having a higher concentration of operational biotech parks have a greater share in the overall revenue figures reported. The infrastructure and facilities at these parks have attracted domestic as well as multinational companies to set up base.
Inducing Supportive Government Policies

Encouraged by success of biotechnology clusters developed by the two biotechnology parks in year 2000, several state governments began to adopt this strategy to build biotechnology clusters. The success of the parks has further encouraged formation of favorable government policies as is indicated by the number of state supported biotech parks in India. There are 7 operational state-supported biotech parks in India while more than 30 are at different stages of development. Quite significantly, all of the operational parks are based on a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.
Concessions have been the preferred PPP model for most State Governments for development of Biotech Parks. Further, the Central Government has incentivised such induced clusters through the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) policy. Specific, fiscal and support incentives (refer box) are provided to export-oriented units that are set up in an SEZ. Apart from these state funded parks, there are private biotech parks and biotech SEZs to support biotech activities flourishing in many parts of country. Currently, there are 22 Biotechnology focused SEZs in India.

Encouraging Innovation

The Biotech Parks in the country have helped significantly in terms of encouraging start-ups/new entities. This has been done by developing incubators across the country. The facilities provided in an incubator consist of common equipment libraries, wet labs, dry labs, all of which are leased out at nominal rentals to start ups. These facilities have helped entrepreneurs and small scale companies overcome the set up and operating cost barrier.
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt. of India, has also played a pivotal role in promoting innovation by taking initiatives to develop incubation facilities across the country. While the incubation facilities at the S P Biotech Park and the Lucknow Biotech Park have already been approved, similar facilities are also expected in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. According to the recently announced National Biotechnology Development Strategy, DBT has plans to support 6-8 more incubation centres to be operational by 2010. The infrastructure provided is supported through the Small Business Innovation Research Initiative (SBIRI) which provides funding support to high-risk pre-proof-of-concept research and late stage development in small and medium companies lead by innovators with scientific backgrounds.

Biotech Parks in India: Areas of Improvement

While Biotech Parks in India have already shown some success in improving the overall acceptability of the technology, there are several areas that need attention.

Academic Presence: Indian companies trying to improve their competitiveness and enhance their in-house expertise and capabilities require access to a pool of highly trained personnel. However, the supply of researchers trained in leading-edge biological methodology remains limited. This is in part due to migration of a large number of talented Indian Ph.D. students and research scientists out of India, and in part due to inadequate industry-academia interaction in the country. Industry-academia research linkages in India have largely been confined to a few premier institutions. Biotechnology Parks can play a more proactive role in resolving this situation. This may be achieved by physically placing industry and academia in close proximity in these Parks. Multiple options may be explored, such as:

* Developing educational/research space alongside industry space in Biotech Parks.
* Developing industrial parks alongside established educational cluster (s).
* Setting up finishing schools in the Park in proximity to the industry area managed by the industry itself.

Entrepreneurship Culture: Although there is an increase in the number of incubation facilities in the country, the growth in number of professionals turning entrepreneurs is still much lower. While the Parks are providing infrastructure for innovation, what leaves the picture incomplete is lack of funding resources and mentorship. Biotechnology Parks can step in to partner with the incubatee companies, as is the case with some parks in the developed world, by taking an equity stake in the incubatee's company in lieu of funds. The repayment of funds may be structured on the basis of expected risk and rewards. Further, there is a need for putting up on-campus mentorship cells which include guidance on regulatory, IP and funding matters.

Support Infrastructure: Biotechnology parks require large areas for development. It is thus not very often possible to locate them within city limits. Considering this scenario, provision of basic support infrastructure required to ensure a reasonable quality of life for its occupants is necessary.

Conclusion

India has demonstrated that a developing country can be successful in emerging high technology fields, such as information technology and biotech. Government policies and support, and the expertise and efficiencies of the private sector, are important and equal contributors to this process. The analysis of India's biotech sector reveals that Biotech Parks have been crucial elements in the initial success of India's biotech industry. The confidence in this concept is evident in large numbers of biotechnology parks being developed in India. India has been able to capitalize on some significant resultants of this phenomenon, such as industrial growth in these regions, encouragement to innovation which in turn has induced favourable government policies.

As such, the evolution and development of Parks in India provides several valuable lessons for other developing countries that wish to develop or enhance their capacity in biotech.

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