Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa will lay the foundation stone of the nine million square feet Bengaluru Life Sciences Park to in Electronic City on Wednesday.
The 52.27-acre park to come up at a cost of ₹5,000 croreis being set up under a public-private partnership with the Karnataka government and private entity Labzone Corp. The first-phase of the project will be completed by December 2022.
Conceived as the third component of the Biohelix Park, created on the recommendation of Vision Group of BT, will provide space for enterprises/MNCs in biotechnology.
The State’s Deputy Chief Minister CN Ashwathnarayan,
said Bengaluru is home to around 60 percent of all major biotech firms in the country - 380 companies and 200 start-ups. Karnataka has 9 per cent market-share in Asia’s biotech space while the country has a total of around 35 per cent.
The new facility will house more than 150 companies and is expected to generate around 50,000 employment. The park will have a dedicated incubation space with shared instrumentation lab facilities and customisable fully fitted lab and office suites.
Kiran Majumdar Shaw, chairperson of the Vision Group on Biotech, said that it was the idea of the Deputy Chief Minister to converge both the technologies – Information Technology and Life Sciences. “There’s huge demand for this park to come up, which will attract major biotech players from across the globe to invest and make use of this integrated park,” she added.
Chirag Purushotham, CEO of Bangalore Life Sciences Park said that 60 percent of this space (around 37 lakh square feet) will be solely dedicated to industry cluster development of biotech in PPP mode for a lease period of 64 years.