KTR lays stone for 5 projects at Genome Valley

Rx Propellant has already developed 5-lakh sft of lab space. In total, the planned development of seven independent projects namely, B-hub, Innopolis, Genopolis, Touchstone, ARX, Nextopolis, and GV1 will be taken up across 17 lakh sft

Hyderabad: Telangana Industries Minister KT Rama Rao on Tuesday participated in the groundbreaking ceremony and foundation stone laying event of five new projects, including B-Hub, in Genome Valley. The new additions to Telangana's life sciences ecosystem will bring an investment of Rs 1,100 crore and addition of about 3,000 new jobs, according to the Government of Telangana.

KTR laid the foundation stone for two new projects including the State's flagship initiative, Biopharma Hub, which aims at catalysing the biopharma sector. Also, Genome Valley witnessed the groundbreaking ceremony for Phase II of three existing projects namely, Innopolis, Touchstone and ARX.

Speaking at the ceremony, KTR 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 sft space in the next year or so.

Currently, 30 lakh sft 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.

One of the key projects, B-hub, a Biopharma accelerator built in collaboration with the government of Telangana is spread across two acres. The 1.6 lakh sft features a fully functional biopharma scale-up manufacturing facility along with a GLP grade turnkey incubator of 40,000 sft. Hyderabad-based Rx Propellant, an Actis (global investor) portfolio company and a life sciences infrastructure and cluster developer will undertake the development of the newly launched nine lakh sft of lab spaces at Genome Valley in Hyderabad.

With major footprint in Genome Valley, Rx Propellant has already developed five lakh sft of lab space. In total, the current planned development at Genome Valley includes seven independent projects namely, Innopolis, Genopolis, Touchstone, ARX, Nextopolis, GV1 and B-hub, spread across 17 lakh sft.

The company has invested Rs 900 crore in development of current Life Sciences infrastructure and has committed to invest an additional Rs 2,000 crore to build a cumulative portfolio over 100 lakh sft of lab space over the next five years across Hyderabad and other major Life Sciences hubs in India.

Also present during the event were Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary (I&C) government of Telangana, M Shakthi Nagappan, Director Life Sciences and Pharma, government of Telangana

Milind Ravi, CEO, Rx Propellant, Vishal Goel, Managing Director, Rx Propellant, Nandini Piramal, Executive Director, Piramal Enterprises Ltd and S P Reddy, CMD, Terminus Group.