Innovation incomplete without investment: Dr Jitendra

New Delhi, Sep 3: Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, and Minister of State, PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh Thursday held a joint round table with StartUps and Investors, and also launched BIO-NIVESH, a strategic platform aimed at strengthening engagement between biotechnology innovators and the investment community and catalysing the flow of private capital into promising biotechnology innovations for scale-up and commercialisation.
Dr. Jitendra Singh said innovation is incomplete without investment, while investment will not sustain itself without innovation, making closer engagement between innovators, investors, industry and Government essential for India’s biotechnology-led growth. He said BIO-NIVESH would help build the bridge required to take promising ideas from research and entrepreneurship to industry, scale and markets.
During the interactive roundtable with participating startups and investors at BIO-NIVESH, Dr. Jitendra Singh suggested that the biotechnology ecosystem could consider the feasibility of a “Big Five in Five Years” approach. Referring to a similar idea discussed at a recent roundtable with space investors and entrepreneurs, he said focused resources for creating a few large anchor companies could help build an ecosystem under whose shadow other startups could also grow and expand. He said ideas emerging from one sector could be examined for their applicability in another, wherever feasible.
The Minister said the objective should be to create an ecosystem in which science meets capital, innovation meets industry and research meets the market. He said the Government can create enabling conditions and take the initial risk, but private capital has a critical role in sustaining growth, building enterprises and taking technologies to scale.
Dr. Jitendra Singh said biotechnology could drive the next industrial revolution and India must not repeat the experience of being a late entrant, as happened during the IT revolution when the country was about a decade behind. He said initiatives such as BIO-NIVESH are aimed at ensuring that India is prepared to capture the opportunities emerging from the next wave of technology-led growth.
The Minister said the BIO-NIVESH approach reflects the Government’s broader “whole of government plus whole of nation” approach, as biotechnology innovation and investment require coordination across multiple ministries and sectors. He congratulated BIRAC and the team behind BIO-NIVESH for bringing together diverse stakeholders and pursuing an agenda that extends beyond the Department of Biotechnology alone.
Drawing on the experience of recent policy initiatives, Dr. Jitendra Singh said the opening up of the space sector to private participation had generated significant interest among investors and entrepreneurs. He also referred to the opening up of the nuclear sector to private players, saying that the policy announcement itself generated strong investment interest, including from international business leaders. He said such experiences demonstrate how enabling policy decisions can create an appetite for investment even in sectors where private participation was earlier limited.
On biotechnology, the Minister called for greater engagement with the corporate sector and a change of mindset on both sides. He said biotechnology has its own characteristics, with longer development cycles, demanding regulatory pathways and significant capital requirements, while successful innovations can generate enduring value and major impact on health, society and the economy.
The Minister invited investors to look beyond immediate funding rounds and assess the technology, intellectual property, development pathway, market potential and possibility of building globally competitive companies from India. He also encouraged innovators to engage with investors early, noting that the right investor can bring not only capital but also strategic knowledge, partnerships, manufacturing capabilities, market access and global networks.
Dr. Jitendra Singh said India’s rapidly expanding bioeconomy demonstrates the potential of its young scientists, entrepreneurs and innovation ecosystem. He said the next phase must ensure that promising biotechnology innovations receive the capital, partnerships and market access needed to move from laboratory to scale and from scale to global markets.
He said public funding alone cannot take every promising innovation to market and scale, and that Government support should serve a catalytic purpose by reducing early-stage risk, demonstrating technological potential and making innovations more investable for private capital.
The Minister also referred to the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund with an outlay of Rs 1 lakh crore, under which BIRAC has been designated as a Second-Level Fund Manager for biotechnology and allied sectors. He said the framework would enable long-term patient capital for technology developers, startups and companies working in strategic biotechnology domains, particularly projects ready for technology translation, scale-up and innovation-led manufacturing.
The inaugural edition of BIO-NIVESH brought together 20 high-potential biotechnology/deep-tech startups and a curated group of around 50 investors. The platform has been designed as a two-way engagement mechanism going beyond conventional startup pitching or investor-connect formats, enabling innovators to understand the investment lens while giving investors deeper insight into the scientific, regulatory and development pathways of biotechnology.
The first session featured direct Startup–Investor Connect, with the 20 startups selected on the basis of innovation, development stage, market potential, scalability and regulatory readiness. The second session featured an interactive engagement of the Minister with participating investors and startups on access to capital, commercialisation, scale-up and enabling measures for innovation-led growth.
The programme was attended by Dr. Rajesh S. Gokhale, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, DG-BRIC and Chairman, BIRAC; Dr. Dhananjay Tiwary, Senior Advisor, DBT and Managing Director, BIRAC; Prashant Prakash, Founding Partner, Accel India; along with representatives of the investor and startup communities.
Dr. Jitendra Singh said BIO-NIVESH should ultimately be judged not by the number of pitches or meetings, but by the partnerships created, investments mobilised, technologies scaled and products brought to market. He expressed confidence that the platform would become an important strategic mechanism for strengthening India’s innovation-investment interface and enabling biotechnology innovations to move from laboratory to market and from India to the world.
BIO-NIVESH is envisaged as a recurring platform, with subsequent editions proposed across different cities to broaden participation, connect regional biotechnology innovation ecosystems with investment networks and build sustained engagement between innovators and investors.