NITI Aayog looks at ₹50,000 crore fund, plans to boost biotech

New Delhi: The government’s public policy think tank NITI Aayog has unveiled an ambitious plan to transform biotech into India’s next major growth engine, proposing ₹50,000 crore BioEconomy Growth Fund, six national biotech missions and regulatory reforms to build a $691 billion bioeconomy by 2035 that would create more than 30 million high-value jobs.

The recommendations are part of the “Plan for Building India as a Leading Bioeconomy Powerhouse by 2035”, issued by the NITI Frontier Tech Hub in consultation with the Department of Biotechnology, industry leaders and biotech experts. The report was released by Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Science and Technology and Gobardhan Das, Member of NITI Aayog, on Thursday.

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The bioeconomy is emerging as a new engine of economic growth, with biotechnology increasingly used to develop medicines, improve crop yields, produce sustainable fuels and chemicals, and produce materials using biological processes instead of fossil fuel-based methods.

Quick answers to key questions

•5 QUESTIONS

The ₹50,000 BioEconomy Growth Fund aims to bridge the gap between laboratory innovation and commercial-scale production, supporting biomanufacturing and advanced therapeutics, diagnostics and synthetic biology ventures.

The six National Biotechnology Missions will build capabilities in critical areas such as gene therapies, climate-resilient crops and disease monitoring, helping to advance India’s biotech sector and positioning it as a global hub for biologics.

Faster regulatory approvals are critical to accelerating innovation in emerging technologies such as cell and gene therapies, enabling India to compete globally in biomanufacturing and reducing dependence on imported biological inputs.

Biotechnology is essential in developing drugs, improving crop yields and producing sustainable fuels, making it a significant driver of India’s economic growth and contributing to the expansion of its bioeconomy.

Yes, developing domestic biomanufacturing capacity can reduce import dependency, strengthen supply chain security and position India as a competitive player in the global biotech market.

According to the report, India’s bioeconomy has expanded nearly 16-fold over the past decade, from $10 billion in 2014 to $195.3 billion in 2025, and now contributes 4.8% to the country’s GDP. She said the next phase should move from incremental growth to mission mode execution using artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and next-generation biomanufacturing.

BioEconomy Growth Fund

The most important recommendation is to create a ₹50,000 crore BioEconomy Growth Fund for the period 2026-2035 to bridge what the report calls the “valley of death” between laboratory innovation and commercial-scale production. The proposed fund would provide blended financing, catalytic capital and infrastructure support for biomanufacturing, advanced therapeutics, diagnostics, fermentation platforms, biomaterials and synthetic biology businesses.

The plan also recommends Production Incentives (PLI)-style incentives for bio-manufacturing and faster regulatory approvals to help India become a global manufacturing hub for biotech products while reducing dependence on imports for critical bio-inputs.

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The report serves as a policy blueprint for expanding India’s biotech sector into a major economic engine. Besides setting growth targets, it recommends financial mechanisms, regulatory reforms, governance structures and sectoral missions to help India compete with countries such as the US, China and European Union member states in the fast-growing global bioeconomy.

India’s bioeconomy was valued at $195.3 billion in 2025, according to the India BioEconomy Report 2026, released in March by the Biotechnology Industry Research Council (BIRAC). The sector includes biopharmaceuticals, industrial biotechnology, agricultural biotechnology and research services and includes nearly 11,900 biotech startups. Biopharmaceuticals remain the largest export-oriented segment with India’s pharmaceutical exports at $25.05 billion in FY26, up 2% from $24.57 billion in FY25.

Six National Biomissions

The plan recommended six national biomissions to build capacity in biotechnology frontier areas. These include affordable gene and cell therapies under GeneIndia, climate-resilient crops through AgriBio 2.0, artificial intelligence-driven synthetic biology platforms under BioX Foundry, an integrated disease surveillance system through One Health Grid, marine biotechnology to support the blue economy and BioPharmaNext, which will establish India as a global hub for biologics, genes and similar cells and vaccines.

To improve policy coordination, it recommended the establishment of an Empowered Committee on National BioMissions, a National BioData Council to manage biological and health data, a BioEconomy Investment and Policy Forum to align public and private investment, and a dedicated Bio-IP Accelerated Pathway to accelerate patent approval and commercialization of biotechnological innovations.

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The plan called for faster regulatory approval pathways for emerging technologies such as cell and gene therapies, synthetic biology and AI-designed drugs, creation of regulatory sandboxes to accelerate innovation and modernization of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, besides strengthening intellectual property (IP) protection for biotech innovation.

In terms of infrastructure, the report recommended the creation of a national network of biofoundries and biomanufacturing centers equipped with advanced automation, pilot production facilities and scale-up infrastructure to help translate laboratory research into commercial products.