Bangalore, May 16: NBRIC has been constituted by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) as a consortium based on public-private partnership model. NBRIC is a ‘A Make in India’ initiative for Biomedical research and innovative products, towards promoting import substitution and exports
Dr Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman of Biocon & ABLE, will chair  the 6-member governing council of NBRIC. The other members are Prof  G Padmanabhan, Prof Vijay Chandru, chairman, Strand Life Sciences, Dr Mahesh Bhalgat ( COO, Syngene), Dr Kavita Singh from DBT. Dr Taslimarif Saiyed, CEO & Director of C-CAMP will be the convenor.
The consortium will be coordinated by the Center for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP). ABLE ( Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises) is an industry partner to the consortium along with CII. 
“The country needs to be self-reliant in product manufacturing to meet our biotech and biomedical needs. NBRIC brings together academia, industry, startups and MSMEs,” said Dr Renu Swarup, secretary, DBT while announcing the formation of NBRIC.
Added Dr Mazumdar-Shaw:” The consortium is of immense national importance during this unprecedented global health emergency. It will enable us to synergize our latent capabilities across academic research labs, startups, MSMEs and large enterprises to deliver innovative solutions.”
Prior to the formation of the consortium ABLE and C-CAMP had created a database of more than 400 Indian companies that have wide ranging capabilities in the field of vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostic kits like RT-PCR used now extensively for COVID-19 testing, enzymes and other key products used for handling various infectious diseases. NBRIC will build on this to utilize the existing synergies  for more innovation.
“We have realized the dire need of biomedical resources. This consortium is a major effort to address the need and promote indigenous development and manufacturing,” said Dr Saiyed.

As industry partner, ABLE  will help implement the NBRIC mission and objectives, by engaging with enterprises and stakeholders in their network in the domains of discovery and development of diagnostic reagents, diagnostic tests and platforms, vaccines and Biologics and provide their expertise to the operations of the NBRIC Portal ( www.nbric.in).
The key objectives of NBRIC are:.
Identify providers/manufacturing enterprises of crucial bio-medical resources
Assess their current capabilities, capacities and requirements
Support them by creating a enabling environment and connecting with policy makers and other stakeholders from public and private sectors
Be the gateway for funding from DBT, BIRAC and DST for development or scaling

The National Biomedical Resources Indigenization Consortium(NBRIC) aims to make India self sufficient in manufacturing critical vaccines, diagnostics, reagents and therapeutics to tackle ongoing pandemic like COVID-19 and other future pandemics.