Submitting funding proposals to the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is at your fingertips now. Not only that, you can now track their monitoring online.

The DBT, the nodal agency funding biotechnology research in India, has launched this new online system, called E-promise, to facilitate more efficient grant submission and management. The system was launched by the Minister of Science and Technology Mr Sudini Jaipal Reddy. With facility for online peer-review, the system will also bring transparency in the system of making grants.

The online system will help track project performances and allow estimation of benefits to the country and the department.

In addition to this, all associated activities like taskforce meetings will be scheduled and sanction orders generated online. Users will be alerted through e-mails, documents like progress reports and utilization certificates can be uploaded and the status of the grant can
be tracked from any place.

While hardcopy as well as online submissions are allowed now, the entire process will be only online March 2014 onwards. There are about 7,900 projects already in the system. More than 2100 projects have been funded in the current financial years.

The online system will help track the performance of the projects and give an estimation of what will be bringing better results for the department and to the country in the long run.