The new policy hopes to drive India's green bioeconomy while creating skilled employment opportunities in the sector. Credit: Subhra Priyadarshini
India has launched a new policy to scale up efforts in high-performance biomanufacturing with a stated ambition of achieving a US$300 billion bioeconomy by 2030.
The BioE3 (Biotechnology for Economy, Environment, and Employment) policy, unveiled this week, intends to fuel high-performance biomanufacturing by supporting research and entrepreneurship, India’s science minister Jitendra Singh announced. It foregrounds development of bio-based products with minimal carbon footprints, a shift from India’s traditional chemical-based industries.
India’s bioeconomy has grown from US$10 billion in 2014 to over US$130 billion in 2024. The new policy wants to accelerate technological development and commercialization by creating biomanufacturing hubs and biofoundries, according to Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary to India’s Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
“The policy will drive green growth,” said Jitendra Kumar, Managing Director of DBT’s Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC). The council will steer the project by identifying and supporting scientists and institutions working on early-stage development. It will also help industry partners take their products from testing to near-market production, he said.
The BioE3 policy has six broad focus areas – bio-based chemicals, biopolymers and enzymes, smart proteins and functional foods, precision biotherapeutics, climate-resilient agriculture, carbon capture and its utilization and marine and space research.
All the thematic areas will be open for proposals providing technological solutions, Kumar said. An expert committee will evaluate these proposals and fund them based on national priorities and commercial potential. DBT and BIRAC will prioritise strategically important products, such as drugs and intermediates.
“India is also lagging behind in high-performance biomanufacturing such as precision fermentation, and in the use of artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT)," Kumar said. The government will encourage international partnerships, especially in training, skilling, and technology licensing in these areas, to achieve cost advantages.
Reviving industrial biotechnology
Biotechnologists and start-up founders welcomed the initiative as a crucial step in optimizing homegrown capacity and skills. Guhan Jayaraman, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras (IIT-M), said since India’s focus on industrial biotechnology and biomanufacturing was wavering over time, the new initiative is refreshing.
Kumar added that DBT and BIRAC will collaborate with IITs and industry partners to train a workforce equipped to meet market demands of high-performance biomanufacturing.
The policy also reflects a national thrust towards growing the bioeconomy, with states like Karnataka planning to increase their share in the field. Anurag Rathore, coordinator of the Centre of Excellence for Biopharmaceutical Technology at IIT Delhi, said India must focus on its strengths, such as biotherapeutics. "This means carefully screening projects to select those most likely to achieve the policy's goals," Rathore said.
Despite the optimism surrounding the BioE3 policy, challenges remain, particularly in scaling up biomanufacturing from the laboratory to commercial production. Jayaraman noted that while academic institutions have the skills to deliver, biotechnology requires more incubation time compared to fields like software. "It's important to recognize that while academia has the skills to deliver, biotechnology needs more incubation time compared to other fields," he said.
Karthik Raman, a start-up founder at IIT-M’s Computational Systems Biology Lab, echoed this sentiment, stressing the need for the industry to adopt new technologies and processes, even if it means sacrificing short-term profits. "This shift is necessary to achieve long-term sustainability and become a global leader in the sector," Raman said.
Kumar said participating industries will be encouraged to lend capacity to start-ups so that they can cross the crucial bottleneck of scaling up production.
