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India No More Hot Offshore R&D Centre
Few companies will look at India as their destination for offshore R&D
centres in the next 18 months. In fact, there is already a sort of slowdown in
the number of such units being set up in the country. From 75 new offshore R&D
centres in 2005, the number has dwindled to just 15 last year. There are about
600 MNC captives in India and R&D offshoring activity in the country is
estimated $6 billion and is seen as growing at 23%. Software product development
captures over 50% of R&D market, with the balance contributed by embedded
systems space.
According to a study by Zinnov Consulting, some key reasons for this trend
were cost escalation of 8% to 15%, attrition of up to 20%, difficulty in
scalability and lack of recruitment bandwidth. However, the silver lining is
that many of the large and established R&D cenres will lend a lot of buoyancy to
R&D activity from India.
In fact, large companies will grow till their head count reached 30%-40% of
their global R&D workforce, the study says. While there are several challenges,
what has worked for some of the successful R&D captive in India is stable and
strong leadership team that has spent a good number of years to stabilise the
centre.
(Ref: The Economic Times dated March 15, 2008)
Bigtec Invests Rs. 10 Cr For Advanced Biotech Lab At IISc
Campus
In a bid to advance its biomedical diagnostic research and development
efforts, Bigtec Pri vate Limited has opened a state of the art laboratory at the
Society for Innovation & Development (SID) Entrepreneurship Centre in the Indian
Institute of Science (IISc) Campus, Bangalore at an investment of Rs. 10 crore.
The company which has funds for setting up the lab from internal accruals and
internally generated debt is now in talks with venture capitalists to raise $ 10
million for market penetration of its much sought after Micro Thermal Cycler
Diagnostic Platform (MTCDP) to diagnose hepatitis B and C.
The lab will focus on advanced multidisciplinary research to develop, simplified
diagnostic kits utilizing the disciplines of MEMS, optics, molecular biology,
bioinformatics and information technology. In this connection, it has started
associating with scientists at IISc in the areas of infectious diseases and
nanotechnology. The research team spearheaded by Prof. PV Subba Rao has 20
scientists which include four from the reverse brain drain sector who constitute
post doctorates in MEMS, chemical biology, optics and microfludics.
Meanwhile, the company is all set for the clinical validation of its MTCDP to
perform Hepatitis B and C tests at the Centre for Liver Research and Diagnostics
(CLRD), Hyderabad. The study is classified as a non inferiority trial where the
data is statistically being evaluated on the efficacy of the diagnostic chip
BIOMEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) developed in house. The study will be
carried out on 150 patients to begin with. The results of the 150 samples are
expected by, July after which clearances will be sought from the appropriate
regulatory authority in India for multi centric clinical trials in the country,
stated GM Kini, managing director, Bigtec.
CLRD is a DCGI and CDC, Atlanta approved centre for liver diseases. For extended
trials, the company is expected to carry out studies at AIIMS, New Delhi and PGI,
Chandigarh, stated Prof. Rao.
The chip is based on BioMEMS and MEMS. The sensing element is a biomolecule
which is Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) based. The company is in talks with a
European manufacturer for the production of chips. The hand held diagnostic
platform aimed at pricing around Rs 20,000 will be developed by a third party
manufacturer in the country.
"The portable miniaturized detection system which is battery operated will
revolutionize health care diagnostics as it can be used any where from a
remotely located primary health centre to an advanced hospital. The platform
could also be used to conduct epidemiology studies to control epidemics. The
data can be transferred to a central location for health analysts to collate the
information of the epidemic for various purposes explained Kini.
(Ref: The Chronicle Pharmabiz dated April 10, 2008)
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