Asia’s largest Life Sciences and Biotechnology convention – BioAsia 2020 kicked off on 17th February, in the presence of stalwarts from Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Pharma and Healthcare industries in India and abroad.

The 17^th edition of the three-day global forum, being held from 17^th to 19^th February at HICC, Hyderabad was inaugurated by KT Rama Rao, Hon’ble Minister for Industries and Commerce & IT, Government of Telangana. With the theme of ‘Today for Tomorrow’, the annual flagship event of Government of Telangana, BioAsia, is focusing on how innovations and technological disruptions are re-shaping the global life sciences sector.

While inaugurating the summit, KT Ramarao said, "Hyderabad, with its surrounding districts, is India’s largest pharmaceuticals hub, which accounts for about one third of total country’s pharma production and exports. We are further committed to developing Hyderabad as one of the key global Research and Development (R&D) hubs and the results are clearly visible now as the city today serves over 1,000 global innovators in their vision to develop innovative and affordable pharmaceutical products. Various Indian and global companies including Sanofi, Novartis etc. have their significant footprint here and are constantly expanding their operations including R&D and digital support services. Within a span of 2 years, over 20 companies are expected to set up their manufacturing units and R&D centres in the Medical Devices Park”.

During his speech, KT Rama Rao also stated that, while Syngene which has setup its first phase of R&D facility invested Rs 170 Crore,  Biological E, a Hyderabad based vaccine maker has also inaugurated its Rs 300 Crore facility with a potential of creating 1,000 new jobs in Genome Valley, as part of BioAsia. He also said that the Government of Telangana was looking at taking the Telangana’s combined enterprise value $50 billion to $100 billion and create 4,00,000 new jobs in the state. The state is also going to setup a B-Hub, biotechnology hub in the next 2 months and Curative Therapy Institute with the support of CCMB for cell gene research. Hon’ble Minister invited the industrialists to come and explore the opportunities that the state government of Telangana is creating for them at the new Pharma City, world’s largest pharma cluster which will be operational shortly as it has got almost all of the approvals it required from the government of India.

During the event, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed by Dr Peter Piot, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Principal Secretary, Industries and Commerce & IT, Government of Telangana.