Maharashtra registered the maximum number of new biotech startups in calendar year 2021, followed by Telangana and Karnataka, a new report showed.

The state had 145 new registrations, with Telangana (100), Karnataka (95), Uttar Pradesh (93) and Delhi-NCR (90) closely behind, according to the India Bioeconomy Report (IBER 2022) put out by the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE).

Maharashtra is home to 966 biotech startups, the largest number in any state.

Karnataka follows with 697 startups, while Delhi-NCR has 590 and Telangana has 563 such enterprises.

According to the report, 2021 was a landmark year as the biotech industry in India recorded over 1,000 new startup registrations for the first time ever in a calendar year.

By the end of the year, new startups rose to 1,128, taking the cumulative number to 5,365 biotech startups.

It was 4,237 at the end of calendar year 2020.

The increase in bio-incubators, seed money and mentoring support programmes offered by governments led to a conducive ecosystem for bio-innovators to explore opportunities in emerging areas of biotech like AMR, bio-stimulants, cancer genomics, gene editing and synthetic biology, said Krishnan GS, president, ABLE.