DBT Wellcome Trust India Alliance Application for Phase III

The DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance is renewing its funding strategy to train a new generation of biomedical researchers and tackle India’s most pressing health challenges through bold, collaborative science. Why this matters: India faces a dual burden of infectious diseases and rising non-communicable conditions, yet its research ecosystem has long struggled to retain top talent and translate discoveries into real-world solutions. Many promising scientists leave for labs abroad, and fragmented efforts between basic biology and clinical medicine slow progress. The Alliance aims to close this gap by building a self-sustaining pipeline of skilled researchers and fostering cross-disciplinary teams that can address problems—such as drug-resistant infections, maternal health, or affordable diagnostics—that no single lab can solve alone. Potential impact: If successful, the Alliance will create a more resilient Indian research infrastructure. Fellowships and career-development grants will keep early-career scientists in India, building institutional memory and expertise. International, interdisciplinary collaborations will accelerate the development of integrated solutions—for example, linking a molecular biologist studying a pathogen with a public-health team designing a field-deployable test. Structured mentorship and research management initiatives will ensure that knowledge doesn’t stay locked in a single lab but flows into policy, clinical practice, or manufacturing. Over time, this could shift India from a consumer of global health innovations to a producer of context-specific, scalable solutions for its own population and for other low- and middle-income countries.