BIRAC turns 9, to hold its Foundation Day on 20th March

New Delhi: Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) will complete 9 years of its journey towards enabling and empowering the biotech innovation ecosystem of the country on March 20, 2021.

The theme of BIRAC’s 9th Foundation Day for the year 2020 is “Scaling Biotech Innovations For Societal Unmet Needs”. The foundation day celebrations this year will be held virtually on 20th March from 6 PM- 7:30 PM.

The registration link for participation is here. Alternatively, one can watch the event live on Youtube.

In the previous years, the event has been known for its mega gathering of startup founders and participation by bioscience sector stakeholders from across India and abroad. However, it has been drastically scaled-down amid continuing coronavirus pandemic globally, and like last year, the event will now be held only through a virtual platform.

As seen in previous years, this time too more than 300 scientists, entrepreneurs, industry experts, and policymakers were expected at the event not only from the country but also from the International innovation communities. The meeting would have included discussions on the impact the biotech ecosystem is making on the Indian economy and the opportunities which exist for the Indian biotech sector as a global player.

During these nine years, BIRAC’s efforts have been focused on enhancing the innovation research capacities within the biotech industries and encouraging young entrepreneurs to take their innovative ideas towards scale-up and commercialization, so as to meet the country’s challenge for affordable product development for the masses without undermining the quality.

With over 1650 biotech industries, academia, start-ups, and entrepreneurs supported, BIRAC has helped close to 150 products and technologies in getting commercialized or at an advanced stage for commercialization. Further through BIRAC’s support, more than 200 IPs have been generated till now.

A look at BIRAC’s journey

Since its foundation in March 2012, the BIRAC has set its footprints across India and at all major global biotech destinations.

Established under the aegis of the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, BIARC as a Public Sector Undertaking, has the mandate to foster and promote innovation research in biotech industries especially start-ups and SMEs and act as an interface between Industry and Academia.

BIRAC has over 10 flagship schemes that are supported by funding from the Department of Biotechnology and manages 7 collaboratively funded programs with international partners, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Nesta, the Wellcome Trust and USAID, among others. BIRAC tries to galvanize the social impact by piloting research and extension services within a series of thematic calls and other global definite initiatives to improve public health and beyond.

There are more than 15 agencies both national and international who are BIRAC partners for implementing the various activities, nearly 700 national experts from academia, industry, public and private research laboratories and government/ministries department who are involved as experts and resource persons and facilitate the decision-making and monitoring of BIRAC activities. BIRAC is also playing an important role in the recently announced Startup India Action Plan for promoting the Biotech Innovation Ecosystem.

BIRAC has supported 25 Bioincubators and 2 Regional Centres for Entrepreneurship Development. The innovation and startup support has resulted in more than 100 technologies and products at different stages of commercialization.

Being the first of its kind organization in the biotech sector, BIRAC has surely made some impact on the innovation landscape which is clearly visible in terms of swelling numbers of innovators and startups.