KTR launches five projects at Genome Valley

Hyderabad: IT Minister KT Rama Rao on Tuesday laid the foundation stone for five projects involving a cumulative investment of Rs 1,100 crore and which have potential to create employment to 3,000 people.

The programme also includes the State's flagship initiative, Biopharma Hub, which aims at catalysing the bipharma sector.

Speaking at the foundation stone laying ceremony of the five projects, 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 now will add about 20 lakh sqft space in the next years or so.

Currently, 30 lakh sqft is used by over 200 biotechnology, life sciences and pharmaceutical companies in Genome Valley, India's first organised research and development cluster. Genome Valley has more plug-and-play facilities than all the clusters put together, he said adding that many contract research organisations are seeing huge growth opportunities.

Telangana has been in the forefront in the vaccines development and its role has been highlighted during the Covid. Investments worth about Rs 2,500 crore by the various companies including Biological E Limited and Indian Immunological to up the vaccine manufacturing capacity.

Pharma company Hetero has announced Rs 750 crore in the sterile pharmaceutical products. Global pharmaceutical player Roche also announced its global analytics and technology centre in Hyderabad. Telangana's life sciences sector would achieve the $100 billion in value milestone sooner than 2030 envisaged earlier.