VATIS UPDATE Article

According to a report from the Association of Biotechnology Led ssEnterprises (ABLE), India has over 3,000 entrepreneurs, one third of whom are women, who have started biotechnology firms in the past five years and have raised a combined total of $2.8 billion or Rs 18,700 crore in the same period. These entrepreneurs have formed 1,022 biotechnology start-ups in the period between 2012 and 2016, with the major hubs for firms being Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

The numbers are promising for the biotechnology sector in India, which had identified start-ups as a key driver for growth as early as 2012. With over 470 biotech start-ups being formed in the last two years alone, the possibility of reaching a goal of 2,000 biotechnology startups by 2020 seems possible. ABLE found that of these 1,022 start-ups 57 per cent of them were working in the field of Bio-pharma, 16 per cent in Bio-research services, 10 per cent in Bio-agri and 9 per cent in Bio-industrial sectors.

The report also said that most biotech startups in the country have adopted a combination of products and services offerings. “While bulk of the start-ups have been working with basic biochemical processes, the R&D kind of start-ups are on the rise too. Nearly 16 percent of the start-ups have showed their activity as research and experimental development,” the report said.