City to have BT incubation centre

City to have BT incubation centre
Wednesday October 24 2007 13:26 IST

Express News Service

BANGALORE: “A Biotechnology Incubation Centre for the R & D will come up in the city in about 18 months. A Biotechnology(BT) finishing School will be shortly established for the benefit of BT graduates and this finishing school will provide hands-on training to students,” said MN Vidyashankar, secretary, Department of Science and Techno logy.

He was speaking at the three-day national symposium on ‘Innovations in Biotechnology: Entrepreneurial Opportunities and Intellectual Property Rights(IPR)’ which began here on Tuesday.

“This BT Finishing School worth Rs 63 crore will also help students get jobs. A second IT Finishing School will be set up in Bangalore shortly on the lines of the Mysore IT Finishing School which was set up in June,” Vidyashankar said.

“Across the state about 900 IT companies and 200 BT companies operate. IT sector contributes about 26 percent of State’s GDP and 4.9 percent of country’s GDP”, he added.

Dr G Padmanaban, Professor at IISs, said, “in this decade BT has made tremendous progress. For 2006-07 alone BT has brought about Rs 7000 crore profit to the country. There is a lot of difference between IT and BT and the latter is making more profits”.

The symposium is on till Oct 25 at Jnana Jyothi auditorium, Central College Campus, BU.