BIRAC

BIG is the scheme most founders come to BIRAC for. It backs young biotech companies whose idea could become a commercial product, and funds the run from ideation to proof of concept. It is run across the country through BIG Partner institutions — the BIG page says there are eight — and each call names the partners for that call. No call was open when we last checked.

What you get

• Grant funding, released in three or four instalments against agreed milestones.
• Continuous mentoring from BIRAC and your BIG Partner: technical mentoring and expert connects, IP support, legal support, networking and outreach, trainings, regulatory advice, business mentoring and investor connects.
• Up to 18 months to deliver, run as a milestone-based project.

Who can apply

• An Indian company or LLP registered under the Companies Act, incorporated no earlier than five years before the call opens.
• At least 51 per cent of capital beneficially owned by resident Indian citizens, or by Indian companies ultimately owned and controlled by them.
• With its own functional, adequate in-house R&D lab — or else incubated at an incubator, which the BIG Partner verifies.
• Represented by a Project Leader who is a shareholder in the company and has completed an undergraduate degree in any discipline.
• Not eligible: companies where a promoter holding 20 per cent or more is also behind another ineligible company or LLP in biotech, and companies in default of loan repayment to BIRAC along with their promoters.
• Only once per startup, and not for objectives already funded by another agency.
• Not supported: basic or exploratory research, low-novelty projects, work without a real biotech component, and late-stage clinical or field trials. It is not a research fellowship and cannot fund a PhD.

How selection works: the BIG Partner first screens for legal and technical eligibility. Eligible proposals go to three to five subject-area reviewers plus a review committee. Shortlisted applicants then present face to face before a Technical Expert Panel run centrally by BIRAC, which is the final selection step. Recommended applicants go through technical and financial due diligence with the BIG Partner, possibly including a site visit, and have between one month and 45 days to accept and complete it. Scoring covers unmet need, value proposition and differentiation, technical viability, team strength and business perspective.

How to apply: online only, through the BIRAC website, while a call is open. Register or log in, choose BIG, fill the proforma and submit. Registration guidelines and a user guide for BIG sit on the scheme page. BIRAC says calls are announced at least twice a year, usually on 1 January and 1 July, but recent calls have not followed that calendar — the 25th call ran through November 2025.

i4, Intensifying the Impact of Industrial Innovation, is the umbrella over BIRAC's two industry schemes. SBIRI supports development and initial validation of new products and technologies, ending at technology readiness level 6 or below. BIPP picks up from there, supporting validation, demonstration and pre-commercialisation at level 7 and above. BIPP sorts proposals into four categories, from socially important work with uncertain market demand through to shared major facilities. No call was open when we last checked; the 2025 calls for both ran from 1 April to 30 May.

What you get

• Cost-shared grant funding, with the split depending on which scheme and how large the project is. There is no ceiling on the overall project cost.
• The full cost of a collaborating academic institution is borne by BIRAC.
• IP ownership stays with the Indian company, and where relevant with the collaborating scientists. Royalty is payable under BIRAC's guidelines.

Who can apply

• A company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013, or an LLP under the LLP Act, 2008 — singly or as a consortium, with or without an academic partner.
• Joint ventures as a company or LLP, together with another private or public partner such as a university or institute.
• At least 51 per cent of shares held by Indian citizens holding an Indian passport; persons of Indian origin and overseas citizens do not count. For an LLP, at least half the original partners must be Indian citizens.
• Adequate in-house facilities to run the project, checked on a site visit, or incubation at a recognised incubation facility.
• An academic collaborator may be a public or private university or college in India, a national research laboratory, or a not-for-profit private research lab, society or foundation.

How to apply: online only through the BIRAC website during an open call, using the SBIRI or BIPP proforma from BIRAC's proposal submission page. Watch the call page rather than the stated calendars: the SBIRI page promises two windows a year and the BIPP page promises three, on different dates, and neither matched the calls actually run in 2024 and 2025.

PACE is BIRAC's academic route. It exists because most biotech research in India happens in universities and research organisations, and PACE pays for the step from a promising result to something an industrial partner can validate. It has two components. Academic Innovation Research funds the academic team to build a proof of concept, with or without industry involvement. The Contract Research Scheme funds an industrial partner to validate a proof of concept the academic team has already established. No call was open when we last checked; the last one ran from 1 April to 30 May 2025.

What you get

• Academic Innovation Research: grant funding for a project of up to 24 months, with IP resting with the academic institution alone or shared with industry where the proof of concept was built together.
• Contract Research Scheme: grant funding to both the academic and the industrial partner, with no stated time limit. IP rests with the academic institution, and the industry partner holds first right of refusal to commercialise it.

Who can apply

• Academia as primary applicant: a public or private institute, university, NGO or research foundation with an established research support system, submitting proper registration or accreditation from a government body — UGC affiliation, AICTE, a CSIR, DSIR or SIRO certificate, society bye-laws or a trust deed, as applicable.
• Industry or LLP involvement is optional for Academic Innovation Research and mandatory for the Contract Research Scheme.
• A collaborating company or LLP needs at least 51 per cent Indian-citizen shareholding, or at least half its original partners as Indian citizens, plus adequate in-house facilities or a place at a recognised incubation facility.
• For Academic Innovation Research, the applicant must have completed at least one extramurally funded project in India of at least three years in the same research area, and must have a Scopus or Web of Science indexed publication as first or lead author, or a filed patent, in that area.

How selection works: evidence matters more than intent here. Under Academic Innovation Research, preliminary data and proof of principle must be submitted, and a proposal without them can be disqualified. Under the Contract Research Scheme, proof of concept at technology readiness level 3 and validation-ready data are compulsory, along with a commitment letter from the industry partner. Basic or exploratory work, and projects without an established proof of principle or with little commercial potential, are not supported.

How to apply: online only. Institutions first register with BIRAC through institution user registration, then submit under Academic Innovation Research or the Contract Research Scheme during an open call.

SITARE backs students rather than companies. BIRAC is clear that it is not a normal research fellowship — it is meant to push a student project towards a product, and on towards a startup. It has two parts, and they are for different students. No call was open when we last checked. SRISTI in Ahmedabad is the current SITARE Partner.

What you get

• SITARE-GYTI: funding support for 15 student projects, plus recognition as a BIRAC SITARE-GYTI beneficiary and orientation, training and mentoring through residential workshops.
• SITARE-Appreciation: a place at a Biotech Innovation Ignition School — three to four weeks of hands-on technical training, expert sessions and access to a bio-incubation centre — with up to ten students per school picked for a grant and possible follow-on training and mentoring.

Who can apply

• SITARE-GYTI: an Indian student doing a PhD or a Master's in any discipline, with a valid institutional ID and a No Objection Certificate in the prescribed format. Exceptional candidates outside these criteria may be considered with BIRAC's approval.
• Ignition schools: students doing a Bachelor's in any discipline, preferably from Tier II and Tier III cities and aspirational districts in India, with a valid institutional ID.
• A student can attend only one ignition school across all SITARE Partners — except appreciation grantees, who can attend later ones on a partner's or BIRAC's recommendation.

How selection works: for the appreciation grant, the work a student does during the ignition school is assessed on its last day, and the strongest studies — up to ten per school — are picked for support. Grantees are expected to carry the work on, at their own institution or in the SITARE Partner's lab.

How to apply: online only, during an active call. BIRAC says the call comes once a year, announced in August or September, and stays open 45 to 60 days. Ignition schools are tentatively held in February, June and December, with up to 40 students per session.

E-YUVA — Empowering Youth for Undertaking Value Added Innovative Translational Research — is BIRAC's scheme for building applied-research and entrepreneurial habits among students and young researchers. It runs through E-YUVA Centres, which sit inside a university or institute and are mentored by a BIRAC-supported BioNEST bio-incubator. Each centre holds pre-incubation space of 3,000 sq ft or more with basic research equipment; anything more advanced goes through the linked bio-incubator. BIRAC's own page currently states there are no active calls.

What you get

• A fellowship and a research grant.
• Technical and business mentoring, exposure to how bio-incubation works, and an orientation to entrepreneurial culture.
• Bench space and equipment in the centre's pre-incubation area, plus entrepreneurial awareness workshops.

Who can apply

• BIRAC's Innovation Fellows: postgraduates and above.
• BIRAC's E-YUVA Fellows: undergraduate students.
• Proposals can be in any domain including healthcare, life sciences, diagnostics, medical devices, drugs, vaccines, drug formulations and delivery, industrial biotechnology, bioinformatics, agriculture, secondary agriculture, waste management, sanitation and clean energy — including work applying artificial intelligence, the internet of things or automation to those fields. Interdisciplinary proposals are encouraged.

How selection works: fellows are chosen through a national application and shortlisting process, run with the E-YUVA Centres and their knowledge partners.

How to apply: register and apply on the BIRAC website when a call is live. The scheme page carries a step-by-step application guide, the prescribed authorisation letter and mentor undertaking formats, and contact details for every E-YUVA Centre — which is the useful place to start, since your centre is who you will work with.

BioNEST is how BIRAC puts benches under biotech founders without running a lab itself. The scheme supports organisations to establish and operate bio-incubators, either standalone or inside an academic institution. BIRAC's page lists 73 supported bio-incubators with a cumulative 1,102,430 sq ft, of which about 160,000 sq ft is equipped with high-end instrumentation; the homepage gives different figures, 94 centres and 1,034,470 sq ft, without explaining the difference. Hosts include C-CAMP, IKP Knowledge Park, SINE at IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, AIIMS Delhi, Bangalore Bioinnovation Centre, KIIT-TBI, the Regional Centre for Biotechnology, the University of Hyderabad and several NIPER campuses. No call for new incubators was open when we last checked; the last national call closed in March 2024.

What you get

• For a startup incubated in the network: incubation space, access to high-end instrumentation, connections between industry and academia, technical and business mentorship, and enabling services covering IP and technology management, legal and contracts, resource mobilisation and networking.
• For a host institution: support to establish and run the incubator, and an efficient governance model.

Who can apply

• The scheme itself is for organisations setting up or running a bio-incubator, standalone or as part of an academic institution.
• If you are a startup, you do not apply to BioNEST. Pick the BioNEST incubator nearest you from BIRAC's published list and apply to that incubator on its own terms.

How selection works: proposals go before a BioNEST APEX Committee, and BIRAC publishes the results of its meetings on the scheme page.

How to apply: register on the BIRAC portal and submit online during a call. A step-by-step submission guide and the BioNEST guidelines are linked from the scheme page.

SEED Fund — Sustainable Entrepreneurship And Enterprise Development — is for startups that have a proof of concept and now have to survive the stretch before angel money arrives. BIRAC positions it as a bridge between what the founders have put in and what an angel or venture investor will put in. It is equity, and BIRAC does not deploy it itself: sixteen BioNEST incubators act as SEED Fund partners and receive money per cycle to invest in startups. Partner incubators shown on the scheme page include Bangalore Bioinnovation Centre, C-CAMP, IKP, IKP-EDEN, SINE, FITT, riidl, KIIT, a-IDEA at NAARM, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, VIT, Venture Center, Golden Jubilee Women Biotech Park, Panjab University and the Gujarat State Biotechnology Mission.

What you get

• Equity capital positioned as a first outside investment, to get you ready for an angel round.
• The incubator relationship that comes with it, since the money is deployed through a BioNEST incubator.

Who can apply

• Post-proof-of-concept biotech startups with new and meritorious ideas, innovations and technologies.
• BIRAC's page sets out eligibility for incubators wanting to become SEED Fund partners, not for startups; the startup criteria sit in the scheme guidelines, so read those before you approach a partner.

How to apply: approach one of the SEED Fund partner incubators. There is no route to this money directly through BIRAC.

LEAP Fund — Launching Entrepreneurial Driven Affordable Products Fund — is the step after SEED. It is for startups piloting and commercialising a product and trying to attract angel or venture money, and BIRAC describes it as a catalyst for follow-on private funding. Like SEED, it is deployed by selected BioNEST incubators rather than by BIRAC. Six partners are shown on the page: FITT, IKP, C-CAMP, Venture Center, KIIT-TBI and SINE.

What you get

• Equity capital to pilot or commercialise your product or technology.
• Positioning to raise the follow-on angel or venture round.

Who can apply

• Biotech startups moving from proof-of-concept stage to pilot stage.
• As with SEED, the eligibility published on the page is for incubators wanting to become LEAP partners — a partner must already be a SEED Fund partner, have been operating five years, and have four years' experience managing early-stage funding schemes. Startup criteria sit in the guidelines.

How to apply: through one of the six LEAP Fund partner incubators.

AcE — Accelerating Entrepreneurs — is a fund of funds, and it is worth understanding who it is actually for. BIRAC does not invest in startups here. It invests in SEBI-registered Category I and II Alternative Investment Funds, which commit to put twice BIRAC's committed amount into biotech startups and SMEs. As of August 2025 BIRAC reports 16 daughter funds and more than 102 biotech startups backed. Daughter funds named on the page include Indian Angel Network, Gujarat Venture Finance, Stakeboat Capital, Kitven Fund, Bharat Innovation Fund, Somerset Healthcare, Ankur Capital, Endiya, Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund, NABVENTURES, Ideaspring and Alkemi.

What you get

• If you are a startup: investment from one of the daughter funds, on that fund's own terms.
• If you are a fund: BIRAC capital alongside your own, across healthcare, life sciences, pharma, biopharma, med-tech, diagnostics, industrial biotech, agri-tech, bio-IT and services.

Who can apply

• SEBI-registered Category I and II Alternative Investment Funds. Preference goes to funds keen on the biotech sub-sectors above, that support startups and SMEs, that have achieved first close, that have a commitment from an institutional investor, and that have invested in biotech startups before.
• Startups do not apply here. Approach an AcE fund partner directly.

How to apply: a fund emails its application and supporting documents to the addresses on BIRAC's page, using the linked application form. Note that the only submission date printed on the page is long past and has not been refreshed, so confirm the current window with BIRAC before preparing anything.

SPARSH is BIRAC's social-innovation scheme, aimed at affordable products that improve healthcare for people who are usually priced out of it. It works by creating a pool of social innovators in biotech who go and find the real gaps: the programme puts fellows through immersion in clinical and rural settings, then funds them to build something. Themes listed include public health, maternal and child health, ageing and health, food and nutrition, farm to plate, agri-tech, waste to energy, climate resilience and environmental pollution. It is between calls — the last fellows call ran in 2021 and the last call to establish SPARSH Centres closed in September 2023.

What you get

• Financial and technical support to develop market-based solutions with social goals.
• Immersion in clinical and rural settings to find real community needs.
• Kick-start grants to build a prototype, plus monthly fellowship support.
• A platform to share practice, understand social-innovation business models and network with other innovators.

Who can apply

• Social innovators in biotech, through the fellows route.
• Institutions, through the separate call to establish a SPARSH Centre.
• BIRAC does not publish detailed eligibility on either SPARSH page; the proformas on its proposal submission page are the place to look when a call opens.

How to apply: online through the BIRAC portal during a call, using the SPARSH or SPARSH Centres proforma.

The Product Commercialization Program Fund covers the gap BIRAC's other schemes leave. Its schemes take a product through development and validation, but once a technology is validated to technology readiness level 7 or above and is market ready there is another set of costs — preparing for market launch, test-validation in the markets you are targeting, and scaling up commercialisation — that none of them pay for. This fund is for those.

BIRAC states on the scheme page and on its homepage that the call for proposals under the fund is currently closed, and that it will announce when the call becomes active again. The last call ran from January to March 2026.

What you get

• Funding for market-launch preparation, test validation in the markets you are entering, and large-scale commercialisation.

Who can apply

• Startups whose technology has been validated to BIRAC's technology readiness level 7 or above and is market ready. BIRAC monitors its supported technologies against that scale.
• Detailed eligibility sits in the fund's guidelines, linked from the scheme page.

How to apply: not open at present. When it reopens, register on the BIRAC portal and submit the stage-one proforma published on the proposal submission page.

Alongside the grant schemes, BIRAC runs an in-house Intellectual Property and Technology Management cell, and it is open on a rolling basis rather than through calls. The cell does IP due diligence on proposals under BIRAC's funding schemes, and separately offers services to startups, SMEs, academia and the wider Indian biotech industry. BIRAC has also empanelled outside IP and technology-transfer firms to do the work where needed, and has set up an IP management and technology commercialisation unit at the DBT-ICT Centre for Energy Bio-Sciences.

What you get

• Patent searches: patentability, freedom-to-operate and clearance, validity and invalidity, and prior art.
• Patent drafting, filing and prosecution.
• Patent analytics — technology landscaping and IP mapping.
• IP policy development and process set-up, and patent portfolio management.
• Technology management: evaluation, marketing and licence negotiation.
• IP and technology management awareness and capacity-building programmes.
• Patent assistance funding, and support under BIRAC-PATH and as a facilitator under the Start-up Intellectual Property Protection scheme.

Who can apply

• Startups, SMEs, academia and Indian biotech industry. The PATH and SIPP support is aimed at BIRAC innovators and Indian biotech startups.

How to apply: download the application form from the IP and technology management page, have it signed by an authorised person, and name the file starting with your company or your own name.