Tamil Nadu launched its own biotech policy in 2000 much before the Indian government?s National Biotechnology Policy 2005. But the state did very little after that, allowing Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat to take the lead. Policy priorities of the Tamil Nadu government were focused more on IT, auto and manufacturing sectors. The state once had 20,000-odd biotech and pharma manufacturing units (most of them actually garage shops), but the number has now reduced to 6,000 units. The state that earned the moniker of Detroit of Asia and is a major IT hub is now hoping to regain its position in biotech as well. So, what is Tamil Nadu planning to do?

In Tamil Nadu, the IT sector provides employment to 3-3.5 lakh workers and the auto industry employs around 5 lakh workers. And now the state is trying to build a similar business ecosystem in pharma and biotech industry. As Indian biotechnology is expected to be a $8-billion industry by 2015 and as India needs to leverage the sector to resolve issues like food crisis, water pollution, new drug discovery and waste management, Tamil Nadu wants to exploit the potential. The state has set up a working group under the CII to study and recommend various policy initiatives that would put it back on the forefront in biotechnology. The policy would also touch upon how biotech applications could redress the raging issue of industrial pollution, especially in places like Tirupur.

?We are currently working on a vision 2020 of Tamil Nadu bio-tech sector that is aimed to bring back the lost glory to the sector in the state,? said Rajeev Ranjan, principal secretary, industries department, government of Tamil Nadu. There are many initiatives the government of Tamil Nadu is undertaking to put the state back on the biotech map, he added.

?We?ll soon be signing up a government to government collaboration with Queensland, Australia, close on the heels of the TICEL biopark phase-II in Chennai. This is expected to give us a good fillip on the international front. The department of biotechnology is extending all financial support to the initiatives of the Tamil Nadu government. Lots of enquiries are expected from pharma companies to carry out incremental and contract researches in the state?s TICEL phase-II biopark. The deputy CM MK Stalin has announced the setting up of a marine biotech park near Chennai. We wish to target the international drug and pharma research market. A possible state-level biotech regulatory authority would be set up to oversee enterprises and crackdown on fake products, as quality is going to be all important,? he added.

The Tamil Nadu biotech sector vision 2020?s main agenda is to generate biotech entrepreneurship in the state. ?We could emulate the Silicon Valley model where universities anchored the IT entrepreneurship by incubating the marketable ideas of their engineering research students, funded by the private equity and venture capitalists in the US. The successful ideas were later commercialised for business and market exploitation. We need to build such scale and quality to reach a kind of academy-industry ecosystem at par with US in the biotech industry,? he added. On pharma biotech, he said that Chennai?known as the medical tourism capital of India?provides an ideal environment for contract research and manufacturing services (CRAMS) and contract research organisation (CRO) firms to set up shop as they can establish close linkages with hospitals for drug trials and clinical research.

As a part of the policy, Mani Iyer, vice-president of the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises, said the state should set up an information bank on various resources and opportunities available for the biotech sector in Tamil Nadu. ?The information bank could be a help desk providing vital information on various government policies, rules and procedures governing the sector in the state. Lack of information is a major lacuna in losing potential foreign and domestic investment in the sector,? he said.

He strongly endorsed the linking of a university-industry model. ?In India, we never harnessed the academia potential for our industries. We are yet to evolve a commercial model of research for our bright students in colleges. We need to establish a broad working relationship with students to leverage their academic potential for industrial projects. The IIT research park is a classic example to begin with. We need hundreds of such research parks to bring students and industry on to a common working platform.?

An entrepreneur who has an R&D office in Chennai feels that the prevailing atmosphere is not very welcoming for the biotech industry in Tamil Nadu. ?We are a foreign firm and upon my insistence a foreign offshore research centre was set up in Chennai some 3 years ago. We have to run from pillar to post for various regulatory approvals, which result in time and cost overruns. It is hard to ship various bio-specimen samples as Indian customs withhold the consignment for days without clearing them. I am now flayed by my head office for choosing the city. Chennai needs to learn a lot from Singapore on business facilitation processes for the biotech industry. There is a need for lots of administrative reforms for foreign firms to consider the city as a potential offshore destination for biotechnology,? he said on condition of anonymity.

Professor Kannaiyan, former vice chancellor, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, urged the working group to recommend ways to revamp the syllabus in accordance with the market and industry requirements. ?Biotechnology has a big role to play in future energy, food and pollution crisis. The students of biotechnology should be made aware of practical and real time challenges through syllabus modification so that they would take the issues as their target goals in a biotechnology career rather than looking for lucrative careers in other sectors of the economy.?