Building Biofoundry India: challenges and path forward

Biofoundry is a place where biomanufacturing meets automation. The highly modular structure of a biofoundry helps accelerate the design–build–test–learn workflow to deliver products fast and in a streamlined fashion. In this perspective, we describe our efforts to build Biofoundry India, where we see the facility add a substantial value in supporting research, innovation and entrepreneurship. We describe three key areas of our focus, harnessing the potential of non-expressing parts of the sequenced genomes, using deep learning in pathway reconstruction and synthesising enzymes and metabolites. Toward the end, we describe specific challenges in building such facility in India and the path to mitigate some of those working with the other biofoundries worldwide.