How Indian Biotech Investments are on a Doubling Spree

A latest report by Ankur Capital provides a closer look at the investments made in biotechnology in the last decade in the country.

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Several first-generation startups in India in the biotechnology sector are at the stage of scaling up their technology and the next few years will define their success as well as the success of the industry as a whole.

Biotechnology has emerged as one of the key technology enablers of the 21st century, disrupting traditional agri-food systems, diagnostics and therapeutics industries as well.

As per the recently published India Deep Science Tech Report by Ankur Capital, more than $900 million were invested into breakthrough deep science biotechnology startups between 2013 and 2023 in India. Driven by a need to develop solutions against COVID-19 and Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), the period between 2020 and 2023 saw growth stage investments into multiple diagnostics as well as therapeutics startups to scale their solutions.

The past two decades have seen three key breakthroughs which have paved the way for biotechnology-led solutions to become a reality.

Next Generation Sequencing:

Faster sequencing of genomic information (whole genome, exome, and genes) has led to an explosion of genomic data and novel biomarkers.

The cost of sequencing has fallen even faster than the exponential increase of computing power dictated by Moore’s law.

CRISPR gene editing:

The 2012 discovery of the CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing toolkit opened doors for highly targeted genetic modifications to address challenges in therapeutics, diagnostics as well as other industries.

AI-based multi-omic modelling:

New machine learning and deep learning models such as AlphaFold for protein sequences, and structures is accelerating the discovery of novel Biomolecules.