“We are assessing damages of individual startups and helping them with space, equipment, incubation and even with funding,” Kharge told ET. He visited the facility at electronic city and also held a meeting on Wednesday to take stock of the situation and decide on a response.
The government has policies to extend funding to startups and the affected ones had already been selected by BBC. “We will see how they will fit into our policy we already have. We will also reach out to pharma and life sciences companies as well as CSR initiatives to see how they can intervene,” the minister added.
More than the physical infrastructure, the startups and the government are worried that the results of the yearslong experiments, intellectual properties and priceless biological and chemical assets have been reduced to ashes.
At his meeting with the affected startups on Wednesday, the minister assured that the government was already in the process of finalizing alternative spaces to help them resume operations at the earliest. The government, he said, was also assessing which common equipment could be arranged to support their immediate needs.
“Karnataka’s leadership in biotech innovation, production and exports is built on the hard work of incubators like BBC and the startups. While the loss of critical innovations and IP is a setback, we are committed to helping them rebuild,” the minister said in an earlier tweet, pledging to stand by the innovators to ensure they come back quickly.
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