BIRAC turns 6, to celebrate its foundation day today at Delhi

New Delhi: Completing its six years of incorporation this year, the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) will be celebrating the success of its journey so far on 20th March 2017 at New Delhi. The event that is themed, “Sustaining Innovation: A Market-Driven Pathway”, will be attended by Prof Vinod K Paul, Member-Health, NITI Aayog and Dr Harsh Vardhan, Minister of Science and Technology who will be the guest of honour and chief guest respectively.

The top dignitaries who would be addressing at the event include Dr Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology (DST) & Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Chairman, BIRAC and Dr Renu Swarup, Managing Director, BIRAC.

Besides the presence of industry leaders such as Dr Krishna Ella, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharat Biotech and Dr Usha Zehr Barwale, Director and Chief Technology Officer, Mahyco, the foundation day event will witness the participation of all stakeholders who would converge to discuss the priorities for scaling up the entrepreneurs in the biotech innovation ecosystem and making India globally competitive in the biotech sector. Therefore, the event is expected to be an excellent opportunity to explore new partnerships and leverage existing strengths to build the enterprise.

The event will also witness the felicitation of Prof G Padmanabhan and release of memoir.

Since its foundation in March 2012, the BIRAC has set its footprints across India and at all major global biotech destinations. As per BIRAC, it engages with more than 500 companies, and nearly 500 Young Entrepreneurs & Start-ups, who have received its financial and mentoring support.

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.

The BioVoice News will be bringing you the live updates on Twitter and also a detailed post-event coverage.