After IT, it’s BT in Bangalore

The biotechnology firms in Karnataka currently have a turnover of Rs 2000 crore. Last year, Bt exports from the state crossed Rs 1000 crore when total Bt export from the country was Rs 2,200 crore. Global companies like GE, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Agilent Technologies and Pall Life Sciences are all present in Bangalore.

“Bangalore has the biggest life sciences cluster in the country at present with companies in biopharma, industrial biotech, diagnostics, drug discovery and training,” said a biotech sector analyst. By the end of June, the first major physical sign of growth of the sector in Bangalore is expected to be unveiled in the form of the first phase of the first biotechnology park in the state, the Bangalore Helix, located on 106 acres of land in the Electronics City area.

Work orders for the Rs 550-crore second and third phases of the Bangalore Helix have been issued to US biotechnology infrastructure major Alexandria Inc. Once completed, the Bangalore Helix will provide 750,000 square feet of space for biotech industries, which would include a state-of-the-art common instrumentation facility, a greenhouse, an animal house, wet labs and an incubation centre. “Unlike the biotech parks that have come up in other parts, this will be a real biotech park and not a real estate project,” said a senior official of the Karnataka Government.

With the progress in the sector, there is also a growing interest among students in Karnataka to pursue biotechnology as a career. Nearly 15 out of 30 of the top schools in this field are in Bangalore.

One of the schools, Institute for Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, has gained recognition as a centre of excellence while another institution, Centre for Human Genetics, will soon be accorded a similar recognition, said M N Vidyashankar, Secretary for Information Technology and Biotechnology.

The existing knowledge base from the Indian Institute of Science, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Jawaharlal Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and the University of Agricultural Sciences is contributing to the growth of the sector as well. However, as the head of the vision group on biotechnology and chairperson of Biocon Kiran Mazumdar Shaw points out: Filling the huge gap in skills requirement in the sector is a concern.

To address this concern, the state Government is planning finishing schools for biotechnology. Tie-ups with foreign universities, like the one with Australia’s Deakin University, are expected to fuel this manpower need of the sector.