Fostering Cooperation In Biotechnology
With over one billion inhabitants and one of the largest and fastest growing markets in the world, India clearly offers a vast number of opportunities for EU enterprises and science and technology (S&T) entities, but access to the Indian market still remains difficult. India is also facing tremendous climate change challenges, linked to the accelerated growth rate and rapidly increasing population. The European Business and Technology Centre (EBTC) in India has been established to promote and support European clean technologies in India, especially in those sectors that can address the climate change issue.
The Centre provides a platform for commercial interactions and close cooperation between European and Indian businesses and S&T entities, with a focus on technologies related to climate change in four sectors: transport, energy, environment and biotechnology. The Biotech cluster activities are conducted by ERBI (Cambridge) and COPCA (Barcelona) under the coordination of the Milan Chamber of Commerce.
Why India?
India's emergence as a growing economic and international player has key implications for the EU as a strategic partner. In recent years India has been recording a growth rate of 8 % and its needs and capabilities in new technologies, research and industrial co-operation are developing in several areas, where the EU is often in the forefront. The EU and India are also important commercial partners, their trade and investment relations have been growing rapidly over the past five-years. Recent figures and trends show that large shares of European businesses are currently investing in India and that the country is becoming a more and more important EU trading partner.
Within this significant economic development, India is emerging as a biotechnology powerhouse in Asia. Aside from great opportunities presented by the huge internal market, India also features a fast growing number of Science Parks, competitive companies and excellent University Institutes. Hyderabad and Bangalore are two internationally recognized centres of research and business in biotech.
However, in spite of the economic growth and the increase of EU-Indian collaboration, European SMEs still face various barriers while entering the Indian market. One of serious obstacles for businesses to invest in this country is a lack of information on intellectual property rights (IPR) management. This is especially relevant for the Biotech sector, where non-tariff barriers to trade and investments as well as communication barriers between the two communities, are very strong.
Moreover, it has to be considered that India is also facing tremendous problems with the increasing pollution, urbanisation and over-population which have serious climate change implications. To secure sustainable development, the country must therefore identify areas in its booming economy where clean technology can be used. India will have to "reinvent growth" without polluting heavily.
At the EU-India summit in Marseille in 2008, leaders stressed that climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time and therefore decided that clean and sustainable development should be a joint priority area of EU-Indian cooperation. As a matter of fact, European expertise in clean technologies and the extensive worldwide efforts to combat climate change represent a major economic opportunity. So this is where a close cooperation between the European and Indian communities can make a difference and have an important impact, notably in green and white biotech.
The EBTC in India
In this context, 16 European partners under the overall coordination of Eurochambres, the Association of European Chamber of Commerce and Industry, have recently established the European Business and Technology Centre within an EU co-funded program. The Centre is already operative in New Delhi and other local offices will be established soon.
The idea of EBTC is to reconcile two objectives: addressing climate change challenges in India and assisting businesses, research institutions as well as individual researchers - in Europe and India - to work together towards generating and enhancing business opportunities and technology transfer. Moreover, the Centre aims to become one of the main reference points for promoting European business and research in India.
The Milan Chamber of Commerce, coordinator of the biotech cluster within the consortium, with two other European leading regional biotechnology industry groups, ERBI and COPCA, will implement a number of activities to help biotech players overcome the described obstacles and foster a durable EU-Indian cooperation in business as well as in research projects.
Biotech Activities
First of all, biotech partners will carry out different information service activities in order to help overcoming the lack of knowledge about the Indian biotech market and funding and business opportunities. The main focus of the EBTC is to pool this existing knowledge and make sure it becomes more accessible to the European business and research community. The special database will be created and available on the project website for all relevant stakeholders (companies, research centres and universities).
Once a general frame of the industrial and research infrastructure has been set up, a map of possibilities and opportunities will be available, partners will stimulate cooperation through networking actions and matchmaking events. In this purpose, partners will take part in main biotech events in Europe as well as in India to promote EBTC activities (Chemmed: the Biotech Expo in Milan, and Bioeurope 2009 in Vienna in November). In addition, project partners will also organize a number of workshops around Europe to present biotech opportunities and involve key actors from both the business communities and enhance their potential collaboration with Indian companies.
An important appointment for EBTC will be the Science and technology cooperation days in New Delhi from the 4th to the 6th of November 2009. The event is organized in cooperation with the EC Delegation and relevant networks and three EU founded projects under the 7th Framework program. The objective of the event is to connect researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders from Europe and India, and facilitate practical cooperation in FP7 and the exchange of information. EBTC will facilitate event participation for European biotechnology and pharma researchers.
In fact, another important engagement for consortium partners within the EBTC project is to facilitate the cooperation between European and Indian companies, research institutions and individual researchers in specific, well-defined fields. This includes promoting the participation of EU researchers in Indian funded programs, subsector-specific matchmaking events, development and implementation of best-practice case studies, organisation of trade missions in cooperation with the European Member States etc.
In addition to our cluster specific activities, the EBTC centre as a whole intends to make a valuable contribution to EU-India relations through establishing creative, long-term dialogue with political decision makers, interacting with public authorities, R&D organizations, cluster/sub cluster consultative groups and private players.
