India's bioeconomy likely to touch $300 billion by 2030: Jitendra Singh

India’s bioeconomy is likely to touch $150 billion by 2025 and over $300 billion by 2030, Union minister of state for science and technology Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday (July 19).

Releasing India’s Bioeconomy Report 2022, Singh pointed out that India’s bioeconomy has reached over $80 billion in 2021 recording a 14.1% growth over $70.2 billion in 2020.

Noting the rapid growth in the sector, the minister said, bioeconomy is likely to touch $150 billion by 2025 and over $300 billion by 2030.

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Biotech startups increase

The minister urged all the stakeholders of the biotech sector, particularly industry, startup ecosystem, investors, scientists, scholars, entrepreneurs and enablers like DBT, and BIRAC to collectively work to achieve the ambitious target.

Singh said the number of biotech startups in the country has increased from 50 to over 5,300 in the last 10 years, because of the growing enabling ecosystem and prioritisation provided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He hoped that biotech startups arising from a strong talent pool are expected to further increase two times, to 10,000-plus by 2025.

Singh also launched special Biotech Ignition Grant call for the Northeast region (BIG-NER) and announced financial support of up to ₹50 lakh each to 25 startups and entrepreneurs from Northeast Region to develop biotech solutions. He said the Northeast has huge potential and talent to take forward the biotech sector and asked the ministry to reach out to them.

He said India is among the top three in South Asia and top 12 destinations for biotechnology in the world, with approximately 3% share in the global biotechnology industry. Moreover, India has second highest number of USFDA approved manufacturing plants outside the US.

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He said biotechnology sector has the potential to have a cascading multiplier effect on overall economic growth of the country. This sunrise sector enables technology-led solutions for healthcare, industrial manufacturing, agriculture, environment and clean energy, the minister added.

$219 mn of bioeconomy daily

The India BioEconomy Report 2022, based on the data on biotech sectors’ contribution to the economy, has been brought out by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC).

The report said that India generated $219 million of bioeconomy daily, adding $80.12 billion in 2021.

On average, at least three biotech startups were incorporated every day in 2021 (a total of 1,128 biotech startups set up in 2021) and the industry crossed $1 billion in research and development spending. “A trebling within a year from $320 million to $1.02 billion,” it added.

On the vaccine front, India administered nearly 4 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines per day (total 1.45 billion doses given in 2021), the report said, adding that the country conducted 1.3 million Covid-19 tests each day in 2021 (total of 506.7 million tests).

The ethanol production of 3.3 billion litre capacity has doubled to 6.5 billion litres in 2021. With further growth, India would save its import costs, thereby, directly impacting the forex reserves and import-export imbalance in the favour of achieving $10 trillion overall economy target by 2030, the report said.

The agriculture sector which employs nearly 60% of India’s population has a large scope of improvement. BT cotton, biopesticides, biostimulants and biofertilizers contributed to about USD 10.48 billion in 2021 for bioeconomy of the country, the report said.