Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC)

A Section 25 ‘Not-for-Profit Company’

of

Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India

Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) is being set up as a ‘Not-for-Profit’ Section 25 Company.  This would be DBT’s inter-face agency for supporting Industry-Academia interaction, and will serve as a single window for the emerging biotech industry. It will also help establish connectivity with professional and institutional networks and provide financial support for mid-level, quality innovation targeted at affordable solutions and product development.

Vision and Mission of BIRAC:

The Vision is to stimulate, foster and enhance the strategic research and innovation capabilities of the Indian biotech industry particularly SME’s, to make India globally competitive in biotech innovation and entrepreneurship, to create affordable products and services for addressing the problems of the largest section of society.

To accomplish this, the Mission is to facilitate and mentor the generation and translation of innovative ideas into biotech products and services by the industry, promote academia – industry collaboration, encourage techno entrepreneurship and enable creation and sustainability of viable bio-enterprises.

BIRAC aims to become an independent, autonomous, dynamic organization which can operate with a unique methodology nurturing the high risk projects which hold potential for commercialization. BIRAC would also act as a mentor and facilitate capacity building both for Biotech industry and academia. BIRAC can be visualized as an organization with 4 unique verticals to support it’ s mandate:

1. Nurturing innovation by mentoring and funding high risk, highly innovative projects by itself and on behalf of multiple partners throughout the innovation value chain, viz: early stage innovation research, product development, product validation and commercialization.
2. Promoting and supporting Public Private Partnership Innovation programmes.
3. Provide Project management and other innovation support services, particularly for regulatory product evaluation.
4. Build Strategic Alliance for providing essential need based research and innovation services to the Industry, particularly small and medium industry, as a gap filling measure.

This is a unique initiative of the Government to promote the growth of Biotechnology industry in India.

BIRAC - MANDATES AND FUNCTIONS

BIRAC - PRESS RELEASE