The largest bio-technology conglomerate Global Bio-India 2021 was inaugurated by Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister of Science & Technology, Earth Sciences and Health & Family Welfare on March 1, 2021. Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs was special guest at the inaugural session. The three-day event will see different sessions touching down upon different aspects of biotechnology. 

The event is being co-organised by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India along with its Public Sector Undertaking, and Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) in partnership with industry association Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE) and Invest India.

BIRAC’s Technical Compendium 2021 was released at #GlobalBioIndia2021 in presence of Anju Bhalla, MD, BIRAC.

Martin van den Berg, Ambassador, Embassy of Netherlands in India, Nepal and Bhutan commented that COVID-19 showed us that the world needs more international collaborations in terms of science, technology, agriculture. 

Dr Ralf Heckner, Ambassador, Embassy of Switzerland in India and Bhutan said “India is one of the most innovative countries in the world and 2021 budget proves that, where a large amount has been allocated for R&D. 

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist, WHO emphasised that we are at a very critical junction, as COVID-19 cases have gone up particularly in Europe and America. There are many uncertainties now, particularly of the different variants of the virus.“India has shown the capacity to be a manufacturer at the global scale and also be an innovator when it came to vaccine development. There is a huge amount of scope to study the impact of vaccines, which needs to be thought through by a very coordinated approach,” she said.

Dr Vardhan, commended, “DBT - BIRAC for supporting technology -driven 3500+ entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs; through various operational models of cooperation and also building up a network of 55 Bio-incubators with more than 5,50,000+ sqft of incubation space. These initiatives have helped innovators to create a pool of intellectual wealth (260+ IP filed) and has supported the launch of 200+ products and technologies in the market.”

Dr Renu Swarup, Secretary, DBT highlighted the vision of  ‘Bio-Science life to Bio-science Economy’. Dr Swarup informed that the second edition has over 6,000 delegates from over 50 countries and will be hosting around 24 knowledge sessions across different segments that will be held over these three days.