A decade ago, biotechnology was being hyped as the next big thing. Many task forces, public consultations and trade fairs provided the focus for seemingly endless media coverage on biotechnology as the future for growth and development.

The knowledge-intensive tech industries seemed to offer much hope as the IT bubble burst in the late-1990s. And in March 2002, the first genetically-modified crop, Bt cotton, was released to much fanfare.

Dubbed the biotech city, Bangalore, India was at the epicentre of the IT boom. Biotech was viewed as the natural successor to IT and the bringer of new technologies that would provide a platform for growth, innovation, job creation and more. So what happened next?

A recent seminar jointly convened by the Centre for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, the Association for Biotechnology Led Enterprises and the STEPS Centre, and supported by UKIERI, explored this question.

The seminar was an opportunity to reflect on the changing biotech sector in Bangalore over the past decade, and to track important policy changes. In two recent blog commentaries, Ian Scoones reflects on how the biotech sector fared over the past decade and on the changing regulatory challenges for biotechnology in India.

As Scoones explains in one of his blog posts: "Biotech in Bangalore retains the hype and much of the hope of a decade ago. Today, however, commentators are more sanguine about the potentials. The sector is clearly thriving, but in a different way to what was envisaged."

Read Ian Scoones' blogs on the STEPS Centre website:

• Biotech business in Bangalore: a decade of hype and hope?
• Getting hotter: regulating biotechnology in India