Bengaluru: The government’s nodal funding agency for the biotech industry, the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), will house its regional entrepreneurship centre at Bengaluru-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), a biotechnology innovation incubator.
“BIRAC’s Regional Entrepreneurship Centre’s (BREC) aim is to increase portfolio through partnerships. We want to connect with startups. We realise it has to be through partnership,” said Satya Prakash Dash, head of strategic partnerships and entrepreneurship development, BIRAC. “BIRAC will support the centre (BREC) which will engage with startups through a variety of programmes.”
BREC will be engaged in biotechnology entrepreneurship awareness programmes, creating a national biotechnology entrepreneurship challenge, business/strategy boot camps, workshops, investor meetings and seminars. “BREC will provide a direct interface between angel investors and early-stage VCs, among other things. BREC will play a facilitator’s role. It is directly funded by BIRAC and will have focussed resources to deliver the programme,” said Dash. BREC is also looking to foster startups in tier-II and tier-III cities as well.
“The idea is amplification. This is in line with the strategy as BIRAC is committed to the Startup India program to create five regional centres. The first one was BIRAC Regional Innovation Centre (BRIC) with IKP Knowledge Park in Hyderabad. This was to map regional innovation starting with South India,” said Dash.
“Launching of BREC at C-CAMP provides an ideal platform to step up and amplify biotechnology entrepreneurship across India,” said Taslimarif Saiyed, Director, CCAMP. C-CAMP is a Department of Biotechnology initiative and a member of the Bangalore Life Science Cluster, which includes National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and inStem.
Source: The Economic Times
