PRIP Scheme Adds Discovery Track With Aid up to Rs 50 Crore

The Department of Pharmaceuticals, under the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, has announced a New Discovery track under the Promotion of Research and Innovation in Pharma and MedTech (PRIP) Scheme. The track is meant to push start-ups and MSMEs into the high-risk business of discovering new drugs and therapies, and the online PRIP portal has opened for applications under the scheme's second call.

What the new track offers

Financial assistance of up to Rs 50 crore will be given per company, per project or per portfolio of projects. The applicant must bring at least a quarter of the project cost as co-funding from bona fide institutional investors. The department describes the money as large-scale risk capital that should pull institutional investors into drug development at an earlier stage than they usually enter.

Who can apply

Start-ups and MSMEs working on New Chemical Entities or New Biological Entities at Technology Readiness Levels 1, 2 or 3 may apply under this exclusive track, and the department will support such projects only up to TRL 6. The aim is to move more home-grown NCE and NBE assets from discovery towards clinical development, and so build a drug innovation pipeline that can compete globally.

The other two tracks

Besides the discovery track, applications are open under an Early Stage track and a Later Stage track. Early Stage covers start-ups and MSMEs at TRL 1, 2 or 3 moving up to no higher than TRL 5, with assistance of up to Rs 5 crore per project. Where the approved project cost is up to Rs 1 crore no co-funding is needed; beyond that, half of the excess is co-funded by the applicant. Later Stage covers industry, start-ups and MSMEs at TRL 4, 5 or 6, with assistance of up to Rs 100 crore per project, capped at 35 per cent of the approved cost.

Scheme size and priority areas

The PRIP Scheme carries a financial outlay of Rs 5,000 crore. The second call invites applications in three priority areas: new medicines, including NCEs, NBEs and phytopharmaceutical drugs; complex generics and biosimilars; and novel medical devices. Under the first call, 41 projects were approved for around Rs 1,600 crore in assistance, with the remaining applications still being evaluated. Applicants who filed a project in the first round have been told not to resubmit the same project.