Telangana Unveils Life Sciences Collaborative

March 1, 2024

The Telangana government recently announced key strategic plans to boost growth and innovation across the state’s thriving life sciences ecosystem clustered in Hyderabad.

Formation of Life Sciences GCC Consortium

Industries Minister D Sridhar Babu announced that the state will facilitate formation of a Life Sciences GCC (Genome Valley Cluster Companies) Consortium. This collective platform will enable collaboration, knowledge transfer and coordinated advancement among the over 800 life sciences firms operating within Hyderabad’s Genome Valley cluster.

As a leading life sciences hub in Asia, Genome Valley houses global majors like Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, DuPont, Thermo Fisher alongside Indian pharma leaders and cutting-edge startups. However, interlinkages and partnerships have largely progressed in silos so far.

The Consortium aims to nurture a cooperative network that drives higher efficiencies, innovation and global competitiveness across the value chain encompassing biotech R&D, devices manufacturing, vaccine production, clinical trials and biopharma.

Centre for Fourth Industrial Revolution

In line with Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao’s vision of spurring next-generation industrial growth, a Centre of Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) focused on healthcare and life sciences was launched in Hyderabad.

Established in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, it is Telangana’s second C4IR nodal center after the one on Mobility and Smart Cities launched in 2021.

Aligning Technologies and Goals

The life sciences C4IR aims to harness technologies like AI, machine learning, big data analytics and IoT to accelerate solutions for three priority areas:

Skilling programs to expand jobs and entrepreneurship
Health profiling for preventive care through data analytics
Clinical registries with real world evidence to support therapeutic innovation from lab to market
Emerging Partnerships

Sweden’s wearables firm Garmin Health has partnered with C4IR on organizing a hackathon to co-develop digital health monitoring tools.

C4IR also inked an MoU with the National University of Singapore around boosting clinical trials and skill development initiatives in Telangana.

Industry Response

Industry leaders have lauded the government’s facilitative focus on boosting integration and next-gen capacity building across Hyderabad’s massive life sciences ecosystem. Enhanced coordination is expected to nurture higher IP generation and startup activity in the state.

Building on inherent advantages of talent pool, infrastructure and favorable policy incentives from the state government, the latest plans provide fresh momentum for Telangana to continue attracting global lifesciences investors even as it nurtures a vibrant indigenous innovation climate.

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