The Bio-Incubation Boom in India
Posted: 29 Sep 2019
Date Written: July 25, 2018
Abstract
India has seen a boom in the incubation of biotech and medtech start-ups in recent years. 397 companies (list provided) have been incubated in 30 such incubators so far. The government plans to establish 50 more of such facilities. The existing incubators are largely under 10 years old, are all funded by the Government of India, and are concentrated in the South of India. They have different strengths, such as comprehensive instrumentation facilities, access to a large student body etc. Their biggest challenge is to achieve sustainability in their funding, with rentals and grants their largest source of funds at present. In terms of their achievements, at least one incubatee per incubator has achieved Rs. 10 million in annual turnover. It will be important to start assessing the performance of these government-supported incubators. For this, we suggest an assessment framework.
Keywords: BIRAC, entrepreneurship, incubation, start-ups, tech transfer
JEL Classification: M13, L65, O53, L89
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