India is well positioned to achieve its potential in the biotechnology sector by 2010, claimed Rajesh Jain, the Chairman, Biotechnology Sub-committee, CII Northern Region and Jt. Managing Director, Panacea Biotec Ltd.

Jain said that the biotech industry holds a nine billion dollar global market potential across various segments. He said that by the year 2010, the potential in India could be in the range of Rs 25,000 crores.

"India is in fact well positioned to achieve this potential with its intellectual pool of resources - biotechnology graduates and numerous research and academic institutes, many of which have already started generating leading edge research outputs", he added.

Jain defined agriculture, pharma biotech and industrial applications as the key avenues with significant potential for India. Talking about the micro areas in the domain of these key avenues, he mentioned food security, pest resistant crops, high nutrition transgenic crops, vaccines, recombinant therapeutics, monoclonal antibodies,biofertilizers and enzymes as having vast opportunities.

Deliberating on the subject further, Jain said: "We have all the requisite genes for success: people, opportunity and capability. He, however, said that it is necessary to complement theoretical knowledge with sound practical learning.

Biotechnology being a capital intensive and knowledge-based industry, Jain stressed on the urgent need to have enablers i.e. close association of government, academia and biotechnology industries.

Sheetal Ranganathan, Group Manager - Business Research, Evalueserve, stressed on how biotechnology was closest to meeting the requirements of India in the 21st century, particularly in agriculture; where the need to introduce a new technology regime was critical.

Nutritional security was important from the health perspective and health research and where India was already playing an important role in the global context.

"A revolution is taking place in the knowledge base of biotechnology, opening up enormous applications in the health care, agriculture, food production, and environmental protection. This is in addition to the basic scientific discoveries that are being made globally, and in India as well", she further stated.

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