The last three months have been hectic at ABLE, with the threat of Covid-19 receding and economic activity picking up pace. In this newsletter, eN-ABLE, I am happy to present some glimpses into the wide range of activities taken up by Team ABLE.

The most notable ones are the in-person interactions with two key Union Minister, Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman (Finance) and Mr Piyush Goyal (Commerce & Industry). Both the ministers dedicated three hours to listen to us on the development of the Biotech sector, great contribution during the pandemic and ABLE’s proactive role. We had the opportunity to seek solutions to many policies, regulatory and fiscal changes to boost the industry further. The ministers were keen to get into details of all the challenges and were positive to consider all the requests.

These interactions will continue with them and other ministers and key policy makers in New Delhi in the next few months. We will keep the members updated on further developments. The IT-BT department of Government of Karnataka led by Additional Chief Secretary, Dr A V Ramana Reddy, IAS and his team played a crucial role in organizing these meetings with the Union ministers.

The ABLE ‘Webinar’ series has also had good traction with international speakers from Denmark, Singapore and Israel in the last three months. I am also happy to report that ABLE did a highly successful industry interaction with our counterparts in South Korea, in collaboration with the Indian Embassy in Seoul. We need our members feedback to make such webinars more meaningful. The interim India Bio Economy Report (IBER) prepared by us for BIRAC indicates, now there are 5000+ biotech startups and the BioEconomy grew by more than 45% during the July-September quarter.

The ABLE Executive Council is making all efforts to prepare the organization for the future to step up our support to the Biotech sector. ABLE bylaws are being redrafted, making necessary changes in line with the legal stand point. We realize the need for expanding ABLE activities in regions with ABLE Regional chapters and to start with we will open in East at Bhubaneshwar and in West at Pune, Key Bio clusters. We are also refurbishing the ABLE secretariat located in Bangalore to provide members a central location to have short meetings and interactions. You can look forward to more initiatives going forward.

Season’s Greeting and Happy Festivities to you and your families.

G S Krishnan

Hon. President, ABLE