Our biotech industry got a great opportunity to show case its strengths and capabilities in the sector to a global audience at the world’s largest industry event, the BIO International Conference that opened in Boston in USA on June 5. More than 25 companies and organizations, states such as Karnataka, Kerala are part of the India Pavilion, set up yet again at this prestigious global event in the USA, by the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE) after a gap of three years, due to pandemic.

The India Pavilion got off to a grand start when Dr Rajesh S Gokhale, secretary, Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, officially inaugurated the India Pavilion on Monday, June 5. Dr Gokhale had the opportunity to interact with the Indian delegation and talked to all participants at length, when he visited their stalls.

More importantly, ABLE arranged interaction for the official delegation led by Dr Gokhale with the international audience at a lively session driven by ICBA, on how to improve Biological Manufacturing capabilities in all corners of the world. After the Covid pandemic that hit the world for more than two years from 2020, the world has realized why it is important to have reasonable manufacturing capacities of vaccines and other biotech therapeutics in as many countries as it is possible to improve access to these critical products to as many people as possible quickly to tackle similar situations like the pandemic.

The world got to know from our interactions that India produced more than 2.3 billion doses of covid vaccines in 2021, vaccinated more than 4 million people daily throughout the year, conducted 1.2 million covid tests every day. All these efforts helped to keep covid under control in India. And India exported more than 500 million doses of covid vaccines on priority to countries desperate for the vaccine.

I am happy to note that the India Pavilion of receiving large stream of visitors and participants are getting large number of serious business enquiries. In the four-day conference, we expect hundreds of business meetings to take place in the India Pavilion and other forums within the conference area.

ABLE also brought its annual India Biotechnology Handbook 2023 to give an overview of India’s growing $93 billion BioEconomy, details of key players, notes on India participants and activities at BIO Boston and other relevant details for a global audience. The India presence is strong with more than 150 participants in the conference and exhibition. Dr Gokhale released this publication.

The next edition of BIO will take place in San Diego, California, from June 3-6, 2024 and we at ABLE look forward to even greater participation from India’s biotech ecosystem to make the world engage with our companies even more in the forthcoming years and placard Indian Biotech capabilities.

G S Krishnan

Hon. President, ABLE