The full form of BIRAC is Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council.

Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) is a not-for-profit Section 8, Schedule B, Public Sector Enterprise, set up by Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India as an Interface Agency to strengthen and empower the emerging Biotech enterprise to undertake strategic research and innovation, addressing nationally relevant product development needs.

BIRAC is a new industry-academia interface and implements its mandate through a wide range of impact initiatives, be it providing access to risk capital through targeted funding, technology transfer, IP management and handholding schemes that help bring innovation excellence to the biotech firms and make them globally competitive. In its three years of existence, BIRAC has initiated several schemes, networks and platforms that help to bridge the existing gaps in the industry-academia Innovation research and facilitate novel, high quality affordable products development through cutting edge technologies. BIRAC has initiated partnerships with several national and global partners to collaborate and deliver the salient features of its mandate.

Vision

“To Stimulate, foster and enhance the strategic research and innovation capabilities of the Indian biotech industry, particularly start-ups and SME’s, for creation of affordable products addressing the needs of the largest section of society”

Key Strategies

Foster innovation and entrepreneurship
Promote affordable innovation in key social sectors
Empowerment of start-ups & small and medium enterprises
Contribute through partners for capability enhancement and diffusion of innovation
Enable commercialization of discovery
Ensure global competitiveness of Indian enterprises

BIRAC’s Core Values

Integrity
Transparency
Team work
Excellence
Commitment

BIRAC’s aim is to play a transformative and catalytic role in building a US$ 100 billion Indian bioeconomy. They believe that the agents of change for building the Indian bioeconomy would be biotech start-ups & SMEs and hence their focus is on raising their capabilities.