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Karnataka to set up India’s first life sciences park

Equipped with the world’s best biotechnology infrastructure, the 9 million sq ft Bengaluru Life Sciences Park will come up on a sprawling 52.27 acres at the Electronic City at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore. Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa will lay the foundation stone of the park in Bengaluru on Wednesday. First in the country, […]

Equipped with the world’s best biotechnology infrastructure, the 9 million sq ft Bengaluru Life Sciences Park will come up on a sprawling 52.27 acres at the Electronic City at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore. Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa will lay the foundation stone of the park in Bengaluru on Wednesday.

First in the country, the project has been envisaged under PPP with the government of Karnataka and private entity Labzone Corp. The first phase of the project will be completed by December 2022.

Deputy Chief Minister C.N. Ashwathnarayan, also the Minister for Information Technology and Biotechnology, Science and Technology, said: “Setting up of the Bengaluru Life Sciences Park was envisioned 20 years ago when the Karnataka vision group on biotechnology was set up. The efforts put in by the vision group have finally borne fruit. This park will showcase Karnataka, and Bengaluru in particular, on the biotech map of the world.”

He said Bengaluru is home to around 60% of all major biotechnology firms in the country with 380 companies and 200 startups. Karnataka has 9% market-share in Asia’s biotechnology space, while in India it has a total of around 35%.

Sharing more details, the Deputy CM said the Life Sciences Park is estimated to house more than 150 companies and is expected to generate employment for around 50,000 skilled and unskilled people. The park will have a dedicated incubation space with shared instrumentation lab facilities and customisable fully fitted lab and office suites.

“Today, we are in the forefront when it comes to precision medicine and treatment, live organisms-based treatment, the real time RT-PCR tests, etc, have been possible due to path breaking R&D in the field of biotechnology. The agriculture sector will witness a major development with the help of biotechnology,” the Deputy CM added.

Biocon founder and chairperson of the Vision Group on biotechnology Kiran Majumdar Shaw said that it was the idea of the Deputy CM to converge both the technologies — Information Technology and Life Sciences.

“There is a huge demand for this park to come up, which will attract major biotech players from across the globe to invest and make use of this integrated park. My endeavour is to put Karnataka and India on top of the innovation map of the world, and it is long overdue,” she said.

 Speaking on the occasion, Chirag Purushotham, CEO of Bangalore Life Sciences Park, said that 60% of this space (around 37 lakh sq ft) will be solely dedicated to industry cluster development of biotechnology in the PPP mode for a lease period of 64 years.

The 52-acre industrial cluster will form the third component of the Biohelix Park, aimed at strengthening the biotechnology ecosystem of the state.

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