BIRAC SUBSIDIES

Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) is a not-for-profit Section 8, Schedule B, Public Sector Enterprise, set up by Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India as an Interface Agency to strengthen and empower the emerging Biotech enterprise to undertake strategic research and innovation, addressing nationally relevant product development needs.

BIRAC is a industry-academia interface and implements its mandate through a wide range of impact initiatives, be it providing access to risk capital through targeted funding, technology transfer, IP management and handholding schemes that help bring innovation excellence to the biotech firms and make them globally competitive. In its Eight years of existence, BIRAC has initiated several schemes, networks and platforms that help to bridge the existing gaps in the industry-academia Innovation research and facilitate novel, high quality affordable products development through cutting edge technologies. BIRAC has initiated partnerships with several national and global partners to collaborate and deliver the salient features of its mandate.

GRANT

The Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) is a flagship scheme of BIRAC which recognizes and invests in innovative ideas in the biotech sector. The ideas should have clear potential to translate into commercial products/technologies. BIG supports individual entrepreneurs/ start-ups from ideation to Proof of Concept (PoC). Under BIG scheme, BIRAC provides grant-in-aid of upto INR 50 lakhs (approx USD 75,000) for a period of 18 months. 

Types of projects supported
BIG scheme supports innovation under Healthcare, Lifesciences, Diagnostics, Medical Devices, Drugs, Vaccines, Drug Formulations and delivery systems, Industrial Biotechnology, Agriculture, Secondary agriculture, Waste Management, Sanitation, Clean Energy and related areas.

The project proposals can be submitted in any of the following seven categories:
1. Devices & Diagnostics
2. Drugs including drug delivery
3. Industrial Biotechnology including Secondary Agriculture
4. Agriculture
5. Biosimilars & Stem Cells
6. Vaccines
7. Bioinformatics & facilities

BIRAC encourages proposals involving integration of Biotech with applied sciences that may include Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Sensors, Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning, Automation, Robotics and related disciplines to potentially facilitate transforming healthcare, lifesciences, agriculture, secondary agriculture and other bio-based industry/ markets.

What is not supported?
1. Basic/exploratory research projects
2. Projects having low element of novelty
3. Projects involving systematic clinical trials, field trials or late stage validation/certification of the technology.