The implications of life sciences are overarching. From medicine to agriculture to industry, it can be applied to every walk of life. India's largely unsolved medical needs and the urgent need to produce high yielding crop varieties have given a huge impetus for research in this field.
The Indian biotech sector's overall turnover in 2008-09 was USD 2.51 billion as compared to USD 2.13 billion in 2007-08. By 2010 the industry is expected to reach the USD 5 billion mark. According to a report by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), India ranks among the top 12 biotech destinations in the world and has the third largest number of biotech companies in Asia Pacific.
"Due to its inherent intellectual capital, India has become the preferred destination for research and development activities of multinational companies. On the home front the momentum has been maintained by the help from various departments," says K. V. Subramaniam, president and CEO, Reliance Life Sciences.
He adds that various schemes have been offered by the department of biotechnology to support small and medium enterprises, to encourage private-public collaboration and to open new centres of excellence in biological science research.
The government of India has joined hands with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to train and educate human resource in interdisciplinary studies relevant to biotechnology. To realise this agenda they would be setting establishing a Regional Centre for research, training and education under the auspices of UNESCO by 2010.
The promising areas in the medical domain are vaccines against human pathogens, nano science, and regenerative medicine. Bio-diesel (from seeds, algae and yeast) is a bio-fuel in nascent stages, which is gaining substantial momentum. Developing high-yielding crop varieties, conservation of rare plant species, high energy crop generation through plant tissue culture are some of the important areas in plant biotechnology.
As far as employment opportunities are concerned some companies such as Reliance Life Sciences offers a plethora of job profiles under one roof. Whereas, most other big players in the field focus on one area. In Bio-pharma space, Biocon, Serum Institute, Zydus Cadila and Wockhardt are some prominent names. Bioservices look at the areas which have mainly sprung up after the outsourcing movement. They offer opportunities in clinical research, contract manufacturing or contract research. Bioinformatics deals with data banking and gene-based therapy and requires a knack for numbers along with science background.
Companies include Strand Genomics, Wipro, Genotypical technologies to name a few. "While there are R & amp;D based companies in India, I still feel that a lot needs to done in the industry to fully exploit the manpower we are creating," opines P.K. Yadav, professor, School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
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