When Sea6 Energy moved to Bengaluru in 2013, it had no product in sight even after three years of existence at IIT Madras. This startup had chosen a particularly difficult problem to solve: to find a way to make fuel from seaweed at a scale and cost not attempted before. It quickly became a long-term goal, and to be in business Sea6 had to find a short-term goal. The company’s founders, who had by then graduated from IIT Madras, set out to look for an idea as soon as they moved to their new home at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms in Bengaluru (C-Camp).C-Camp was set up in Bengaluru with two aims: to provide biologists with technology platforms for their research, and to help startups by providing facilities and mentors not easy to get otherwise. It was within the campus of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS). It was also next to the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (InStem). All of them were located inside the campus of the University of Agricultural Sciences. Despite being biotechnology graduates from IIT, none of the Sea6 founders was exposed to agri-biotech. It was the best time and place to learn about this aspect of biotechnology.Within a year of moving to C-Camp, Sea6 launched its first product, a crop-yield enhancement spray. C-Camp scientists had introduced Sea6 founders to professors at the University of Agricultural Sciences, who in turn exposed them to agriculture technologies. They found that seaweed, which the company had been cultivating for fuel, had molecules that would significantly enhance plant growth. Sea6 launched it last year through an exclusive licence with Mahindra & Mahindra’s auto and farm equipment division, thereby providing the company with revenues for short-term growth.Sea6 may have found it difficult to develop this product from anywhere else. The bio-cluster around C-Camp provided everything it would need: a cheap and resourceful lab, expertise on most biological subjects, advice on products and marketing, and money in the first few years of existence. All of them were available within a minute’s walk from the Sea6 lab. After moving to Bengaluru, Sea6 got investments from Biocon chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. Last week, the startup’s founders listened intently as Mazumdar-Shaw walked into their office and advised them on manufacturing and scaling, quality control and regulations, project execution and R&D. “We knew a bit about these issues,” says Sea6 director of R&D Sailaja Nori. “But they became real when she spoke to us.”C-Camp has so far incubated 47 startups, of which five have moved out and 11 remain. This bio-cluster is situated in north Bengaluru, not too far from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India’s premier research-led university that is also generating startups. Meanwhile, another life sciences cluster has started forming in south Bengaluru, inside Electronic City that houses IT companies.This cluster has the Centre for Human Genetics, the Institute for Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, and an incubation facility inside a park promoted by the Karnataka government. Within a few kilometres of this park is Biocon. Close to it is the Narayana Health City with its own medical research ecosystem. Drug discovery services company Aurigene is also nearby.Working with these two clusters are two research hospitals, biotech accelerators, and a new prototyping facility for devices. Together, Bengaluru has now a formidable ecosystem for life sciences and medical startups that has begun spawning a new generation of sophisticated life sciences startups. “It is really incredible,” says Anand Anandkumar, founder of Bugworks Research, an anti-bacterial company being incubated at C-Camp. “I do not have to leave Bengaluru to get anything done for Bugworks, including regulatory filing in the US.”Most of India’s biotech companies are concentrated around Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Hyderabad has quality laboratories and an incubation centre on its outskirts. However, they are spread out over long distances, making it hard for people to meet and exchange views like in Bengaluru. Bengaluru is plugged into the Silicon Valley as well, through a pact between C-Camp and QB3, the University of California life sciences incubation centre in San Francisco and Berkeley.Bugworks was spun off Cellworks, another startup founded by Anandkumar. Bugworks may not have been set up if C-Camp was not present in Bengaluru. This company is developing novel methods to fight infection using a variety of biological and computational techniques. C-Camp gave space and equipment for research at low cost. Scientists at NCBS and InStem worked with Bugworks scientists on solving several problems along the way, and their presence worked like an intellectual multiplier. There were some pleasant surprises as well for the company, what Sea6 chairman Shrikumar Suryanarayan calls “accidental collisions of thought”.Suryanarayan was the former head of R&D in Biocon and a visiting professor at IIT Madras when he bumped into the Sea6 Energy founders. He brought them to C-Camp and became their mentor, also taking up the role of chairman in the process. Bugworks scientists provided intellectual inputs to Sea6 scientists on their biofuel project that was funded by the department of biotechnology. Now scientists from the two companies are brainstorming about partnering, along with the senior faculty from InStem, on setting up a company to pursue a set of new ideas to fight infection.Such accidental collisions happen often in the cafeteria of the cluster. Janani Venkatraman was a scientist working at Bugworks when she met a set of visiting engineers developing healthcare devices. Conversations with them developed into an idea for a device to reduce infections in the air, which was then spun off into a company called Biomoneta. Venkatraman is now developing a device — a prototype is ready — within C-Camp, rubbing shoulders with Bugworks and Sea6 Energy.Controlling infections is one of the themes running through many labs and startups here. Last year, Anandkumar, C-Camp CEO Ramaswamy Subramaniam, Suryanarayan, and a few others got together and created Escape Velocity Accelerator (Eva), an accelerator for biotech startups. It now mentors four companies, one of which is iShield, a company developing textile-based solutions for fighting infections.Ashok Vohra, one of the founders of Eva and formerly a Singapore-based businessman, now mentors Eva companies and does some business development too for them.Specifically, he is helping the anti-bacterial product startup iShield to develop its business worldwide. iShield is the result of several collisions in the C-Camp cluster. SKL Medtech, a Coimbatore-based company, had developed a dressing that could fight infections. SKL came to C-Camp through Eva. It led to a related textilebased solution that could be used anywhere from pillows to garments, and another startup to develop it.With the development of two clusters, such spinoffs and partnerships are becoming more common. Biotech startup activity is about 15 years old in Bengaluru, but most startups remained isolated entities with little interaction between them. Since the city lacked advanced facilities for translational research, it was difficult for startups to tackle sophisticated problems. New institutions have solved this problem in the early stages of a company, but Bengaluru still lacks enough parks and buildings specially designed for biotech companies to scale up close to academic institutions.Bengaluru entrepreneurs are now looking forward to biotech parks that can let them scale up after incubation. For Suryanarayan, proximity of biotech parks to academic institutions is critical when Sea6 moves out.“We must be able to reach the academic institution in ten minutes for a quick meeting when required,” says Suryanarayan. Some biotech entrepreneurs were hoping that the Astra Zeneca R&D centre, which was close to the C-Camp cluster, would be converted to a biotech park when it closed down. With high ceilings and other facilities for research, it was perfect for biotech companies. But its price was too high and the facility was ultimately sold to Cognizant.The Karnataka government ultimately hopes to develop more than one cluster. “One day there can be new academic institutions around IBAB,” says Jagadish Mittur, head of the biotech facilitation cell of the Karnataka government. “Ecosystems are not designed,” says Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. “They evolve.”