KTR launches five projects at Genome Valley

Heralding a new phase of development at life sciences cluster Genome Valley, Industries Minister KT Rama Rao on Tuesday laid the foundation stone for five projects. These involve a cumulative investment of Rs 1,100 crore and have potential to create employment for 3,000 people.

These also include the Biopharma Hub (B-Hub), a PPP project with the Government of Telangana State, Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (TSIIC) and Department of Biotechnology. This aims at catalysing the biopharma sector.

Speaking on the occasion, Rama Rao said the demand for space at Genome Valley was on the rise. “We have a good problem on hand. We are running out of space at the cluster,” he said, adding that various developments and expansions happening would add about 20 lakh sqft space in the next two years or so.

Over 200 biotechnology, life sciences and pharmaceutical companies operate from Genome Valley, India’s first organised research and development cluster. It has more plug-and-play facilities than all clusters put together. Various companies including Biological E Limited and Indian Immunologicals have announced investments worth Rs.2,500 crore to up vaccine manufacturing capacities. 

Homegrown pharma company Hetero announced Rs 750 crore to set up sterile pharmaceutical products



while global pharmaceutical player Roche is setting up its global analytics and technology centre in Hyderabad. Telangana’s life sciences sector is on the track to achieve the $100 billion in turnover sooner than the year 2030 envisaged earlier, Rama Rao said. 

Rama Rao also launched the development of 9 lakh sq ft of multi-tenant life sciences laboratory space by Rx-Propellant, which is part of the UK-based global investment firm Actis. Rx Propellant and its associates will invest Rs.900 crore at Genome Valley. The 9 lakh sq ft includes the Biopharma Hub (B-Hub), GV One, an upcoming campus.

The groundbreaking of Phase II of three campuses – Innopolis, Touchstone, and ARX – was also conducted. Rx Propellant has plans to increase the investment in Genome Valley to Rs.2,000 crore in two years with a potential employment generation of more than 3,000 scientific jobs for the cluster.

“While Hyderabad already has the largest multi-tenanted labspace in the country, we are committed to enabling more world-class infrastructure to support growth of the life sciences sector. I am excited that Actis and Rx Propellant chose Hyderabad and Genome Valley to set up their plug-and-play infrastructure and will be developing close to a one million sqft labspace,” the Minister said.