BIRAC sanctions Rs. 3.5 Crore to PU to establish a “BioNEST”

Chandigarh

14 July 2017

DIVYA AZAD

Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) sanctioned Rs. 3.5 crore to PU for establishing a Bioincubators Nurturing Entrepreneurship for Scaling Technologies (BioNEST) that would primarily host the entrepreneurs in the North of India and assist the struggling innovators to help them make their ideas visible to the society, informed Prof. Arun K. Grover, Vice Chancellor, Panjab University(PU), Chandigarh. His dream to establish the university not only as an academic system but as an “incubator” of technologies, seems to be coming true. With the sole intent to support young scientists/ideas/entrepreneurs, PU has been promoting translation research and bio-entrepreneurship for over a decade. It was added that demonstrating the role of entrepreneurship in an academic system and provide a new direction to research is an integral component of PU’s motto.

Dr. Rohit Sharma, Project leader of BioNEST at Panjab University (BN-PU) and
Chief Coordinator, Cluster Innovation Centre in Biotechnology located at the New
Hospital Building, Sector-25, South Campus, PU stated that Cluster Innovation Centre in Biotechnology (CIC-B) withholds and represents pre-incubation system where a young mind is hand held to give their ideas a practical shape. He informed that the soon-to-be- established BioNEST shall be a strong incubation support to all the new enterprises in North India.
The BioNEST shall provide innovative technology building and capacity building
platform. PU shall therefore dedicate a space of 10,000Sq.ft for the same. The focus area of BioNEST, PU shall be Biopharmaceuticals, Bioprocess technology, Food technology and Agriculture. Incubation charges and modules shall soon be uploaded on the website of BioNEST, PU. BioNEST shall have high end upstream laboratory, complaint analytical facility, Bioelectronics laboratory, conference rooms, office space and wet lab space for companies and newer enterprises, he added.

Dr. Rohit further stressed that in order to reinforce the concept of Bio incubation in North India, CIC-B and Bio-Incubator at PU have to be presented in a united form and fashion. All necessary steps will be taken to build a one-time entry and exit platform that could have the capacity of pre-incubation, Incubation and post- incubation. With CIC-B as a pre-incubation platform, speedy establishment of BioNEST would be the need of an hour, so that North India can implement entrepreneurship at a researcher’s level and embrace the same at a large scale industrial level.” said Dr. Rohit Sharma.
He added that the facility shall be made available to the young entrepreneurs
at subsidized rates along with the capacity building opportunities such as networking
platforms, meetings with stakeholder and the investors in the ecosystem, legal
mentoring, support for Intellectual Property Management and technology transfer.