Source: www.business-standard.com

BANGALORE - India’s biotechnology industry is on a roll. Revenues touched US$2 billion in 2006-07, up from $1 billion in 2004-05 and $1.5 billion in 2005-06. The growth of India’s biotech sector has been overshadowed by the dazzling achievements of its information-technology (IT) sector. But the biotech companies are signaling that their ambitions are no less.

Powered by an average growth rate of 30-35% per year (more than double the industry’s global growth rate), the Indian biotech sector has set a target of $5 billion in revenues by fiscal 2010-11. The Indian government’s Department of Biotechnology says annual sales could touch $25 billion by 2015.

India’s biotech sector has often been compared to its IT sector. Like IT, the biotech business is on an upswing and has a formidable global presence. In terms of volume, it is ranked fourth in the world, while in terms of value of output it stands 13th. And as with the IT sector, it is the vast pool of skilled manpower and low costs that are drawing global biotech giants to partner with Indian companies.

India’s software hub Bangalore is also emerging as its biotech capital. According to the latest Association of Biotechnology-Led Enterprises-BioSpectrum survey, of the 340 biotech companies in India, 183 (53%) are in the southern state of Karnataka, of which 137 are in Bangalore, its capital. Nine of the 21 new biotech companies set up in India in 2006-07 were in Bangalore.

The biotech industry’s upbeat mood was evident at the just-concluded Bangalore Bio-2007, a three-day annual event that showcases the biotech industry’s potential. The event witnessed participation from 15 countries. It played host to more than 600 conference delegates, about 150 exhibitors, 85 national and international speakers, and an estimated 20,000 business visitors.

Global biotech players have shown increasing interest in partnering Indian companies, and this was stressed by several company chief executive officers participating at the event in Bangalore.

This year, US-based Biogen Idec, one of the pioneers of the biotech industry, set up an Indian subsidiary with the objective of doing research and development (R&D) and integrating India into its global clinical development programs. Amgen, billed as the world’s biggest biotech company, is said to be planning a direct presence in India with its own clinical development center. Other global majors such as Genentech, Genzyme, Pall Life Sciences, Agilent Technologies’ biotech division, and HistoGenetics have either just set up base in India or are in the process of doing so, reports The Times of India.

At Bangalore Bio, India’s largest biotech company, Biocon, signed a memorandum of understanding with Deakin University in Australia for joint multi-disciplinary research focused on biotechnology and biosciences. Among other things, the MoU provides for joint development of a mammalian-cell bio-processing facility in Australia and research in metabolic diseases that Deakin will undertake for Biocon.

Industry watchers are likening India’s biotech industry to a baby elephant. It is still young and has the potential to grow and occupy considerable space in the global biotech business.

But there are bottlenecks in the path of its growth. Indian biotech companies remain starved for early-stage funding, writes Subir Roy in Business Standard, an Indian business daily. “Global technology funds have not yet started supporting Indian startups. Innovation startups are being launched, often by returnees from the West, in both IT and biotechnology, but it is the former that is able to get the early-stage funding till now.”

Although “Indian funds like ICICI Ventures, APIDC, the N S Raghavan Foundation and Kotak Private Equity are stepping in, it is still small beer”, Roy says. Avastha Gengraine Technologies (Avasthagen) has accessed 25 million euros (about $33.5 million) from European banks and Shantha Biotechnics has been acquired by French bio-pharma major Merieux Alliance. “But such examples of cash infusion are few and far between,” he writes.

According to Utkarsh Palnitkar of Business Advisory Services at Ernst & Young in Hyderabad, venture-capital reluctance to invest in biotech reflects the nascent stage of the industry in India. The type of products and the relatively small size of biotech enterprises contribute to this reluctance.

“Only a few companies have product portfolios that extend beyond biogenerics,” Palnitkar said. “The absence of a tangible exit route adds to the problem.”

Biotech companies are increasingly looking to banks for funding. “Bank of America and Citibank are eyeing India’s biotech sector, and some funds from abroad are beginning to trickle in, including investment from the International Finance Corp, the private-sector arm of the World Bank group,” said a recent report titled “India’s Health Biotech Sector at a Crossroads”.

Brought out by the McLaughlin-Rotman Center for Global Health at the University of Toronto and Wharton Health Care Systems at the University of Pennsylvania, the report says that Indian biotech companies are trying to get around the funding problem by forming subsidiaries abroad to help them access capital investment, transfer knowledge, and expand overseas. For instance, Hyderabad-based Shantha Biotechnics has set up an independent subsidiary, Shantha West, in San Diego to develop human monoclonal antibodies, and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Transgene Biotek, and Bharat Serums and Vaccines each have subsidiaries or research units in the United States, focused on early R&D.

Indian biotech companies have been hugely successful in bringing down the price of drugs. For instance, Hyderabad-based Shantha Biotechnics has made hepatitis B vaccine available at a cost of $1.25 per course, in comparison with the multinationals’ version that carries a price tag of $125. Shantha Biotechnics supplies nearly 40% of the United Nations Children’s Fund’s global hepatitis B vaccine requirements, which is distributed in developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

However, biotech companies have come in for criticism for their active participation and encouragement of the use of Indians as guinea pigs in clinical trials. The subjects in these trials are often poor and illiterate, with little knowledge of the implications that the trials have for their health.

Global pharmaceutical giants are increasingly outsourcing R&D, clinical trials and product development to countries such as India. India’s large pool of patients, fast patient recruitment, well-trained English-speaking physicians, and intellectual-property protection, besides low costs (clinical trials cost 30% less to carry out in India than in Australia and about 50% less compared with the US), are factors that make this country an attractive destination for clinical trials.

The “India advantage”, according to the website of IGate Clinical Research International, lies in its “huge patient base”, its “diversity of diseases” and its “drug-naive population” (read: untreated). To these global giants and their Indian partners, India’s poor masses are a gold mine. They represent an opportunity that will enable the global majors to cut costs and the Indian companies to rake in millions.

By 2010, global contract research is likely to be worth about $15.1 billion, and Indian companies want a share of the cake. The Confederation of Indian Industry has said that India’s share could be about $1 billion. More than 100 pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Merck, Novo Nordisk, Aventis, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly, are currently outsourcing clinical trials to Indian companies.

Source: www.bbc.com

There was a time, when India’s best and brightest fled India’s shores, preferring to brave humiliation and rabid discrimination in western countries, such as, USA, UK, rather than live in a country, they thought had only a dismal future in store for them. Today, sixty years after ridding itself of Britain’s stranglehold on the sub-continent’s economy and freedom of its people, non-resident Indians and Westerners alike, feel the sub-continent has much to offer them by way of bright career prospects. The same West that liked nothing better than to shout ‘Go home, Paki!’ to any brown-skinned person scurrying down a US / UK street, rrespective of whether he was Pakistani or not, is India bound, looking for gainful employment.

However, the tide has turned, and as India asserts its position as a global economic powerhouse, it has begun to attract Westerners in almost every field. Take for instance, the fact:

1. India’s ever-expanding aviation industry boasts of 350, a number that is rising of pilots from the West.
2. Hiring westerners is a trend the Indian hospitality and tourism industries set in motion, just a few years ago.
3. Today, western tech talent is gravitating towards India’s IT industry.

Nevertheless, unlike Indians who are offered only lowly positions when they go West, most Westerners working for Indian firms, have so far been recruited for senior positions, such as, airline pilots, company CEOs or 5-star hotel chefs. But, times are a changing as things are, and today India’s IT industry seems to be pushing boundaries a little further.

Eastward Bound

Infosys Technologies, the Indian IT major head-quartered in the south Indian city of Bangalore, has rung in the new changes by hiring Americans at grassroots management level and in software development units. With 300-Americans working for it come 2006 year end, 2007 is seeing hordes of Britons joining them.

Currently, there are more than 126-Americans, graduates from some of US’s leading universities, undergoing training in the Infosy’s state-of-the-art Mysore campus, 140-km. (87 miles) from Bangalore. Training over, they will become a part of India’s fast growing brigade of software engineers.

In confirmation, Joao Almeida, a management trainee from the University of Texas, Austin, says it’s a sign of how the global order is changing. “People are now willing to come to work in India. I don’t think that was there before. Now people have seen how fast India is growing and they see an opportunity to be part of it.”

Certainly, the old adage ‘Money makes the mare go’ holds true, as visualize the present to when most Indian firms could not even imagine hiring Westerners on salaries that were on a par with those in Western firms.

Earlier, skilled Indian workers travelled West in search of better job opportunities, a higher standard of living, a better life for themselves and their families. But, India’s economic transformation has seen to it, initially in a small way, traffic flowing inwards rather then outwards. And, home-grown Indian firms are no longer afraid to headhunt and poach the best talent from international competitors, even as they match salaries and perks in India.

Cultural Differences

Of course, much of it is to do with their business needs. Mohandas Pai, Chief of Infosys’s Human Resources explains: “We are a global business; we get 98% of our revenues from outside India. We are trying to make sure that over a period of time our workforce reflects the countries from where we get our business.”

And, it is not only Infosys hiring western tech talent, other Indian IT firms, such as, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro, who do most of their business with the US and UK, have western techies working for them, as well.

Many of them, such as, Joao and his other American colleagues, had never heard of Infosys before joining it. In addition, they were apprehensive about working for an Indian firm. However, Alexus Hines from the University of North Carolina did some internet research on Infosys, before deciding on it. “I was excited to come to India and experience a different cultural surrounding. I like learning about different cultures and I just wanted to have a different environment as opposed to corporate America.”

Today, there is upwards of 50,000-expatriates working in India, most of whom are from the US and the UK, a 1,000+ of them in senior executive posts.

‘Guest’ Workers

Then there are those foreigners who gravitate to India to experience the country’s diverse culture, and often work at call centres for a few months or a few years.

They are welcomed by Indian firms, as linguistically able workers can be got on comparatively cheap Indian salaries. Since, Indian back offices and call centres expect a shortage of personnel fluent in other languages, they seem only too happy to offer employment to these so-called ‘guest workers’.

However, it is not just about earning a few bucks while experiencing the diverse culture of this most fascinating and mysterious of countries. Westerners are eager to work for Indian firms, as the global work culture now on offer in Indian firms, is the greatest incentive. “I have done internships before with some of the top American countries. The environment here is at the same level if not better than the companies I’ve worked for,” says Joao Almeida.

The question remains: “Are Westerners being hired at the expense of Indian talent, as yesterday’s ‘brain drain’ becomes today’s ‘brain gain’?”

In a maturer take than the one taken by the West, when skilled professionals from the sub-continent immigrated to its shores, Indian software engineer A. Krishnamachari views the competition as good for Indian workers and the firms they work for.

And, Mohandas Pai of Infosys believes interaction with foreign skilled workers can only benefit the Indians. On his part, he finds it gratifying that westerns find his home country interesting and wish to work here. “I think it’s becoming a trend. We hear every day that Indian firms are going out and hiring people not only to join them outside, but also to work in India.”

No longer, Westward Ho!, the cry today is Eastward Bound! as India ushers in a new global order. Who would have thought removing a few of Nehru’s disastrous socialist restrictions would see an unleashing of India’s immense potential that his regime sought to suppress, effectively hobbling it with a mish-mash of socialist schemes, cleverly disguised as democracy.

Whereas, more can be undone to see India surge ahead, yet, even now India Inc. has done the nation proud. And while, the legislative and executive organs of the Indian government made up of corrupt politicians working only for themselves and not the nation, as do the no less corrupt and unscrupulous Indian Administrative Services officers, undaunted though restrained, the Indian Tiger has shown it is worthy of the stripes on its back!

Don’t you think, just as it was high time to change the global order of West On Top, it is now time for India to do away with a system inherited from the British, a system that does not work only hampers, a system that indulges sycophancy and glorification of inept, inefficient IAS officers and self-serving politicians. They are, but little men and men of little knowledge, so why do we turn them into demi-Gods? What have they done for the country to be so revered and respected? Nothing! Case in point, while the West has stringent rules and regulations for foreigners visiting or working in their country, India has no restrictions for foreigners in place. Foreigners on 3-month tourist visas to India can and have disappeared, as have Pakistanis, as the Home Ministry, Ministry of External Affairs and Foreigners Registration Offices (the Police is responsible for), each living in a Fools Paradise and kidding themselves over their collective efficiency, as IAS officers party on or give in to political whims and fancies, in a bid to further their careers, even as others sell out the country to the Americans or the Pakistanis for filthy lucre. Shallow, spineless men and women, cardboard cut-outs, political tools and puppets, self-absorbed, pompous fools, full of themselves and the positions they occupy. Will someone help cut their outsized egos down to size!

Cramming for a few exams and passing them does not mean those IAS Babu types have it in them to rule and govern the country. An archaic, lumbering government system shows they have done nothing and are doing nothing for the nation and its people. I say, Off with their Heads (as in Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s during the French Revolution). Let’s have our own Indian Revolution and choose a government of our own liking, a system of governance more like India’s tried and tested ancient Panchayati Raj modified and modernised for a unified India,. Our present westernised version of democracy has failed in the sub-continent, what is good for the West is not always good for the East, as so many western ideas and notions have proved, in large part as our own Rabindranath Tagore said, because western nations are lacking in imagination and poetic sensibility. In the current situation, a Rang de Basanti is necessary to shake up the rotten establishment, to prove we the people mean business, a Rang de Basanti to unleash the full potential of India’s masses.

What India needs is freedom from an ignorant bureaucracy and stringent red tapeism that allows semi-literate fools to rule over those that can and are ensuring India is the next economic powerhouse of the world. How about a transparent system and accountability that prevents the corrupt politicians and unscruplous babus from ruining the country. Despite or in spite or them, we the people, will make the 21st century, India’s century! Kick butt, kick their collective arses!