India's three principal research funders, and the one that recently replaced a name you may still be searching for.
Three bodies fund most Indian research, and one of them recently replaced a name that still appears in older guides and links.
DBT (the Department of Biotechnology) funds the life sciences and owns BIRAC. Its remit runs from basic biology through agricultural and medical biotechnology, and it operates both directly and through the institutions it supports.
DST (the Department of Science and Technology) funds science broadly, and runs the technology development, innovation and start-up schemes. For a company rather than a laboratory, DST's programmes are frequently the relevant ones.
ANRF (the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, established by legislation in 2023) has taken over the role previously held by the Science and Engineering Research Board. If a guide, a link or a colleague refers to SERB, that funding now sits with ANRF. Its remit is broader than its predecessor's, with an explicit intent to draw private funding alongside public money.
Alongside these sit ministry-specific funders and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research with its own laboratory network. For a foreign organisation the practical route into any of them is a partnership with an Indian institution, which will hold the grant and be the applicant of record.
| BIRAC | India's Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, a public-sector enterprise that funds biotech companies rather than laboratories. | |
| Call for proposals round (India) | Indian agencies publish in discrete rounds, and the listing keeps closed rounds visible beside the open one. | |
| JST, NEDO and AMED | Three agencies publish most of Japan's competitive funding, each with a different idea of what research is for. |
Eight questions, no account, nothing sent anywhere. You will know which of the 1526 open calls you can actually enter before you finish your coffee.
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