ILS Bhubaneswar gets Bioincubator – Times of India

BHUBANESWAR: The Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) Bhubaneswar on Monday got a Bioincubator in its second campus here. It has been developed with the help of the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), department of biotechnology under the ministry of science and technology and the Odisha government.

While inaugurating the Bioincubator, chief minister Naveen Patnaik hoped that it will promote research and development in the area of biotechnology and encourage the youth to take up entrepreneurship in biotechnology sector and will be of importance to Odisha and other regions. He said that the government of Odisha has developed start-up policy for encouraging business opportunity in the state.

The Bioincubator will have an operational area of 10,000 square feet built-up space and all dedicated scientific instrumentation for carrying out research in the field of agriculture, health care, diagnosis, devices and value addition and food processing. A total of Rs 10 crore has been spent for this project.

ILS Bhubaneswar director Ajay Parida said the entrepreneurs can use the facility in the incubation centre for research, development, testing and marketing purposes. “An entrepreneur needs instrumentation, facility, testing and other materials while developing any new products. It is very difficult to develop such a facility by spending a huge amount of money. Our Bioincubator will work as a facilitation centre for such entrepreneurs,” he added.

They can also use the animal house of ILS for testing. The entrepreneurs can take benefit of the institute’s drug testing facility, nutritional analysis, genomics, proteomics and quantification. They do not need any infrastructure for starting an enterprise on biotechnology as the Bioincubator will provide them with space. The institute will also guide the entrepreneurs to get funding and market linkage for their products. It will also try to help them to file patents.

Parida said 10 entrepreneurs have been selected to join the Bioincubator. “We want to increase the number to around 60,” he added.

Among others, state science and technology minister Ashok Chandra Panda, DBT secretary Renu Swarup, science and technology department secretary Santosh Sarangi, Manish Diwan of BIRAC spoke on the occasion.