Bhubaneswar, Sept 19: The state government has said that work on the much-awaited biotech park at Andharua on the city outskirts, which had not made much progress since its launch in 2009, will be back on track shortly.

The biotech park was to come up in collaboration with the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, but hardly made any progress. The government has now received information that the company will go ahead with the Rs 100-crore project spread over 64.6 acres.

The biotech park will provide a good opportunity for start-ups because it can help entrepreneurs in the field of agriculture research, pharmaceutical science and biotechnology to work from here.

Science and technology secretary C.J. Venugopal told The Telegraph: "Not just Bharat Biotech, we are also in talks with other biotech majors to come to Andharua and invest in Odisha so that the start-up entrepreneurs can get a major boost to start their units at a particular platform. We are also in touch with the Odisha University of Agriculture Technology so that students can benefit from the plan."

He said that the engineering students would be encouraged to implement interesting start-up ideas and the state government, though various institutions, would support the ventures.

The department of bio-technology of the Union government also grants special assistance to start-ups by students.

"As renewable energy sources are becoming the focus of all attention in the present world, we are also interested to engage young minds in developing new ideas in the sector. IIT Bhubaneswar has been requested to help engineering students from across the state to develop new ideas in this sector," said Venugopal.

Successful start-up entrepreneur Ashutosh Behura, who operates from the technology business incubation centre at KIIT University, said: "The concept of start-up has become common in all leading technology institutes across world and India. We must have them in Odisha so that standardisation of the activities get a universal path for approval."