NITI Aayog Unveils INR 50,000 Cr BioEconomy Fund Plan to Position India Among Top Three Global Biotech Powers

The fund is expected to provide blended finance, catalytic equity, and infrastructure support for advanced therapeutics, diagnostics, synthetic biology, biomaterials, fermentation technologies, and large-scale biomanufacturing.

NITI Aayog has released a comprehensive biotechnology roadmap proposing an INR 50,000 Cr BioEconomy Growth Fund, dedicated incentives for biomanufacturing, six national biotechnology missions, and faster regulatory pathways to help India emerge as one of the world's top three biotechnology economies by 2035.

The roadmap also projects the country's bioeconomy to grow from $195.3 Bn in 2025 to $691 Bn by 2035 and further to $2.6 Tn by 2047.

Releasing the roadmap, Union Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said, "The fourth industrial revolution will be driven by biotechnology. We have to scale up quickly as the evolution of science is very fast. For the manpower requirements, we can even think of creating a course in engineering biology."

The recommendations are outlined in the report Roadmap for Building India as a Leading BioEconomy Powerhouse by 2035, released by NITI Aayog's Frontier Tech Hub in collaboration with the Department of Biotechnology, industry representatives, and subject experts.

The roadmap builds on the Biotechnology for Economy, Environment and Employment (BioE3) policy and argues that India now needs focused execution supported by financing, regulatory reforms, and coordinated governance across ministries.

According to the roadmap, India's bioeconomy has grown from nearly $10 Bn in 2014 to $195.3 Bn in 2025, accounting for about 4.8% of the country's GDP.

INR 50,000 Cr Fund to Boost Biomanufacturing

The proposed INR 50,000 Cr BioEconomy Growth Fund for the 2026-2035 period is intended to address what the report describes as the "valley of death," the financing gap that often prevents promising laboratory discoveries from reaching commercial-scale production.

The fund is expected to provide blended finance, catalytic equity, and infrastructure support for advanced therapeutics, diagnostics, synthetic biology, biomaterials, fermentation technologies, and large-scale biomanufacturing.

It is also proposed to operate within the government's INR 1 lakh Cr Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) framework aimed at attracting greater private-sector investment in research.

The roadmap has also recommended introducing a dedicated production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for biomanufacturing to strengthen domestic production, reduce dependence on imported biological inputs, and position India as a competitive global manufacturing hub for biotechnology products.

Six National BioMissions Proposed

To accelerate innovation, NITI Aayog has proposed six National BioMissions covering GeneIndia for gene and cell therapies, AgriBio 2.0 for climate-resilient agriculture, Bio-X Foundry for AI-enabled synthetic biology, One Health Grid for integrated disease surveillance, Marine Biotechnology to support the blue economy, and BioPharmaNext to advance biologics, biosimilars, vaccines, and next-generation therapies.

Regulatory Reforms & Governance Framework

The report also recommends simplifying and modernising India's regulatory framework through time-bound approvals, regulatory sandboxes for emerging technologies, modernisation of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), stronger intellectual property protection, and closer collaboration between academia and industry.

Highlighting the importance of regulatory reforms, former WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said, "We need regulation overhaul in drug discovery. Otherwise many small countries will move ahead and we will no longer be called the pharmacy of the world."

Additional proposals include creating a National BioData Council, an empowered committee to oversee the National BioMissions, and a BioEconomy Investment and Policy Forum to improve coordination between public and private stakeholders.

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