Empowered By Innovation

- Narayan Kulkarni

The Bangalore Bioinnovation Centre (BBC), a centre for nurturing and promoting start-ups in Life Sciences, has been set up on a 10-acre campus next to Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) and Centre for Human Genetics (CHG) within Bangalore Helix Park. This is a flagship project of Karnataka Biotechnology and Information Technology Services (KBITS), Department of IT, BT and S&T, Government of Karnataka. The Department of Biotechnology, Government of India has generously funded the common equipment facility of this centre. IBAB faculty have been closely involved with the planning and execution of the centre, which started functioning in December 2015. Spread over 50,000 sq. ft., BBC currently have 17 companies.

Dr Jitendra Kumar, the Managing Director of BBC, has been involved actively in mentoring incubatee companies, creating pipeline of entrepreneurs through innovative models of team building around the technologies, working with public R&D laboratories and universities to create entrepreneurial models of commercialization and catalyzing the growth of Biotech cluster in Southern Bangalore

In an interaction with BioSpectrum India Dr Jitendra Kumar spoke about the achievements of the Centre and his plans for the centre. Excerpts of the interview

What is the status of Bangalore Bioinnovation Centre (BBC)?