The Ministry of Science and Technology, headed by Dr. Harsh Vardhan is implementing a communications campaign against the backdrop of new initiatives being launched by them under the Startup India Action Plan called “Science and Technology for Harnessing Innovations” The program aims to accelerate ideas to commercialized products or services. In view of the present focus in the country to translate the research taking place in its academic and research institutions into socially useful products and processes and give a boost to entrepreneurship as well as to encourage innovators into establishing start-ups, the Government has launched several initiatives such as Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), Self Employment and Talent Utilization (SETU), Start-up India, Stand-up India etc. Towards these initiatives, the Departments of Science and Technology, Biotechnology and Scientific and Industrial Research under the Ministry of Science and Technology are having a variety of schemes and programmes that nurture and foster innovation and promote and support incubators and start-ups.

The Ministry is channelizing its resources to help connect various stages of a sustainable development cycle of a startup. More than 3000 innovators, SMEs and startups have been promoted.

In this regards, the Ministry would like to highlight successful and promising initiatives taken up by each the three departments under the ministry i.e. Department of Science & Technology (DST), Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR).

The ministry is organising three MyGov Talks featuring the secretaries of the three departments respectively. The first Talk is scheduled with Prof. K Vijayraghavan, Secretary - Department of Biotechnology on 17th August 2016 at 5.00PM. Citizens are invited to post their questions and ideas for the Talk.

Prof. K Vijayraghavan, Secretary - Department of Biotechnology

DBT has played a pioneering role in developing the R&D ecosystem in the country at par with the global ecosystems. While DBT laid emphasis on the research ecosystem, it created an industry interface called BIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council) to promote the translational research and entrepreneurship in the biotech domain in the country.

BIRAC was incorporated in 2012 as a not for profit company under the aegis of DBT, to strengthen and empower the emerging Biotech enterprise to undertake strategic research and innovation, addressing nationally relevant product development needs.