India's Biotech Sovereignty & AI (with Paul Allen)

Biocon's executive chairperson argues India needs biotech sovereignty in the age of AI to avoid losing its biological data to other countries. She emphasizes India has the talent and science but lacks the investment to scale globally. She notes that while China's generic API business was built by Indian talent, Biocon has zero reliance on China for biologics and fermentation.

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Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw 7.5

India's Biotech Sovereignty & AI (with Paul Allen)

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

India doesn't lack talent, science, or capability, but falls short on investment needed to get to global scale. Opening up to the private sector is extremely important, and VCs should see the merit of investing in these opportunities.

These opportunities will not scale without the right talent, and India has an advantage there.
Asks why biotech sovereignty embedded in AI is important, and whether it's about preventing India's biological data from being used by other countries.

Paul Allen
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Biotech sovereignty is about trading data and knowledge; every country will have its own sovereignty. Biology has never been so computational, and India has that capability. Allowing other countries to leverage India's data without doing something with it themselves would be a lost opportunity.
Asks about India's reliance on China for supply chains and how successful Biocon has been in cutting that cord.

Paul Allen
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

China's generic API business was built by Indian talent. In biologics and biosimilars, and in fermentation science, Biocon has zero reliance on China. So from a supply chain perspective, Biocon has not had a problem with China reliance.

Indian talent went to China and helped them develop API and generics know-how.

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