Saudi Arabia and India: A bioeconomy match made in heaven?

Saudi Arabia and India, two of the world’s fastest-growing economies, are working to capitalize on the rapid expansion of the bioeconomy to turbocharge sectors ranging from energy to healthcare and beyond.

The bioeconomy — an economy where the basic building blocks for materials, chemicals, energy and healthcare are derived from renewable biological resources — is already gaining traction as a way to generate value within planetary boundaries.

By 2030, the bioeconomy and the synthetic biology that it relies on could be worth $30 trillion.

The potential of the bioeconomy has not gone unnoticed by India and Saudi Arabia, who are doubling down on this synergy — and cooperating to deliver maximum progress.

For a clear-cut example of how important the bioeconomy is and how much potential it has, we need look no further than the COVID-19 pandemic. The bio-enabled mRNA vaccine industry delivered COVID-19 jabs in record time, and India’s manufacturing base for inoculations meant that millions of doses were rapidly dispersed globally, saving countless lives.

During the peak pandemic period, India donated 4.5 million doses of indigenously manufactured COVID-19 vaccines to Saudi Arabia as part of Vaccine Maitri (Vaccine Friendship). This partnership is just one example of the strength of cooperative, bio-enabled research and biomanufacturing facilities.

But these two countries could go much further than that.

From climate change-resistant crops to biofuels and vaccine manufacturing, the bioeconomy is poised to play a key role in the development of both India and Saudi Arabia.

Both countries have developed national biotechnology roadmaps. Saudi Arabia’s National Biotechnology Strategy aims to position the Kingdom as a regional and global biotech hub with a far-reaching impact on biomanufacturing and medical innovation. As part of its own National Biotechnology Development Strategy 2025, India is working towards positioning itself as a knowledge- and innovation-driven bio-economy.

India and Saudi Arabia, building on a strong existing trade relationship, have further potential to collaborate across energy, healthcare and bioservices.

Having launched the G20 Global Biofuels Alliance, India is now pushing to manufacture biofuels locally. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s largest oil producer ARAMCO is diversifying its investments and seeking out sustainable energy sources like blue and green hydrogen and alternative fuels. Herein lies great potential for investment.

In healthcare, too, there is potential. Personalized healthcare solutions will be critical to treat large diabetic populations in both countries, to support healthcare industry with big data driven patient diagnosis and to upgrade hospitals to provide patient specific healthcare treatments through increasing use of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and tools like AI and Big Data. From managing patient records and to predicting preventive healthcare diseases, advancements in biotech and 4IR hold great potential. Fused solutions such as 3D bioprinting could power the future of patient specific care and treatments in hospitals. World Economic Forum partners Next Big Innovation Labs and Olayan Group are collectively working to make this a reality.

With a large talent pool, a thriving biomanufacturing ecosystem for biosimilar drugs and contract research organizations servicing the biotech testing requirements of world’s largest economies, India is already a world leader in bioservices. Saudi Arabia can capitalize on this. And, with almost 17% of its public budget towards healthcare and life-sciences sector development, there is a growing impetus in the Kingdom to invest in India’s vibrant bioservices sector. Not only will this bolster growth in both economies, but it will also help Saudi Arabia meet its Vision 2030 health sector goals.

Capitalizing on the potential of an India-Saudi Arabia partnership is key. This could be done by creating value-added academic courses and training programmes to reskill and upskill each country’s workforce; investing a larger part of their R&D budget into bio-enabled and impacted research areas; scaling up domestic biomanufacturing facilities; and/or creating a joint India-Saudi Arabia fund to scale up and commercialize critical technologies.

The World Economic Forum’s Bioeconomy Initiative aims to advance the bioeconomy into the commercial mainstream to deliver scalable, sustainable alternatives and improve the state of the world by facilitating collaboration across geographical, sectoral and societal barriers.