Bio-Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship correlates to the entrepreneur, his vision, his ability to address the problem, innovate and its implementation (Marcati et al., 2008). A potential entrepreneur must be creative, promote capital formation, have risk taking capability and should seek out investment opportunities in the market. In addition to create new firms, entrepreneurs must aim to create new job opportunities in their respective field. Bio-entrepreneurship is rightly explained as generation of fortune resulting from the application of biosciences to the business framework (Lepeley et al., 2019). Entrepreneurs are the driving force of economic growth and social development.
Bio-entrepreneurs are individuals involved in the business (Bonnafous-Boucher & Lamy, 2010). They may be research scientist who are willing to start their own company using the seed fund provided by government for the commercialization of the product based on their research or an expert, trained and experienced professional manager hired by a private equity investor that provides capital to companies exhibiting high growth potential for product commercialization or bio-entrepreneursmay be people who leads their company into research and development (R&D) at clinical trialstagefor the successful launch of the products like vaccines and drugs.
The concept of “bio entrepreneurship” is rightly novel in India (Ullah & Zohra, 2018). Scientist in India still follow the traditional research culture, they do not take risks associated with market like launch of new technology and therefore consider playing safe by following old traditional methodologies. Every bio entrepreneur should try to innovate while working on basic research in order to increase the commercial value of product. The top biotech companies in India includes, Biocon, Serum Institute of India, Panacea Biotec, Rasi Seeds, Aventis Pharma, Bharat Serums, etc. (Mueller, 2007).
Outline of Indian Start-Up Ecosystem
The Government of India has shown great dynamism to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship to boost Indian economy at global level. In the NITI Aayog’s 5th Governing Council, the honorable prime minister Narendra Modi led government aims to take the Indian economy to USD 5 trillion by 2024. To achieve this goal, India needs to significantly increase employment opportunities. This ambition cannot be fulfilled by the existing large ventures alone. Therefore, Indian government is promoting skill development through biotechnology entrepreneurship.
India’s startups will empower the Indian economy by fetching innovative and rational thinking, dynamism, and creating jobs in the Indian market. However, approximately 90% Startups in India fail within a span of first 5 years (Kerr & Kerr, 2020). In recent years, the Indian startup ecosystem has taken off and acquired greater visibility.
However the success of the SSI and the growing Start Up sectors has been unsatisfactory- high failure rate – estimated (Subrahmanya, 2015). Driven by factors such as, availability of funding, foreign investors, evolving technology space and a burgeoning demand within the domestic market. Other factors: growing unemployment, declining jobs in organized sector, global trends, largely oppressive / exploitative rather than nurturing government machinery, few tie ups with established industrial enterprises / large & medium enterprises.