Life science informatics major, SysArris Software, an ISO-certified company has geared up to tap the verdant Indian pharma-biotech space. The company is currently engaged in developing solutions to AstraZeneca Research India to automate a part of their drug discovery, which involves chemical screening and integrate this process with other parts of the drug discovery.
SysArris began its operations in India in 1993 and its parent company Arisglobal has an over two-decade-old global presence with a world class range of pharmaceutical software. Its traditional expertise has been in the areas of e-Integration, mobile computing and ERP, which is being offered to the life sciences sector.
A Ajaysimha, director, SysArris Software who has been with the company since its inception in India, is a qualified Chartered Accountant. He had been a consultant to many software companies under the STP (software technology park) scheme. In an interview over email with Nandita Vijay of Pharmabiz.com, A Ajaysimha talks about his strategies to offer the lifescience sector faster drug discovery goals at an affordable cost and time. Excerpts:
What are the new trends in pharma / biotech software worldwide that are likely to emerge?
From the current practices of pure lab discovery, scientists will now need discovery to be supported by informatics, which is an emerging trend for the future. The focus would be on informatics solutions to address research because of the increasing demand for new effective drugs that are produced at competitive costs. Today, the research is time consuming and isolated. It needs the support of software applications to customize and integrate procedures. The life sciences deal with massive data, which can only be managed effectively by informatics solutions. The trend: 'atomization through informatics' utilized by other industries in the past years, will now play a major role in the pharma / biotech segment. Typically software using various algorithms technique, image analysis, neural network and data analyzer etc. will form part of the integrated solution addressing the need of the pharma / biotech segment.
How large is the current Indian pharma / biotech software market and what is the biggest concern of the sector?
SysArris has always focused on the export market, hence serious market research of the Indian pharma, biotech sector has not been made. The concerns would be qualitative competition with the multinational companies and the cost. Given the various constraints, the challenge would be for companies to discover and generate IPRs (Intellectual Property Rights), which require huge investments and training efforts.
Are there any expansions plans for SysArris?
SysArris has been a stable and focused software provider to the life science segment for the past 10 years and globally for the past 22 years through its parent company Arisglobal. Its pharmaceutical software products are leaders in the world. We have been innovative to also address the bio-segment. SysArris expects to double its operational capacity for the bioinformatics in the coming year.
What is the kind of business model adopted in the company and what are the key strengths of your organization?
Our business model is focused on adding value to customer solutions not only as a pure software company but also as a provider who understands the richness of the functionality and incorporates it in its solutions.
Products are developed with extensive collaboration with customers understanding and the real working requirements of the solution.
The key strength of the organization has been the backbone of 22 years in the life science market, successful projects and a deep functional understanding supported by its rich experience knowledge base in integrating and customizing solutions in all spheres of business.
How has the company fared since 1994 when you started operations and would you be able to give the current turnover and growth rate?
The company has, since its inception in 1994, grown from start up operations of 10 people to current strength of about 180 and has shown a steady growth despite the various marketing conditions. It is a known company in the life science segment and it is recognized for its quality services. The key factors, which fuelled our growth, are: focused products and services, quality consciousness and stability of its strategies. The current turnover is expected to be around Rs. 100 million
What are the inhibiting factors for the pharma, biotech sector in India to evade investing in SysArris' products, which are acceptable by global majors?
The various compliance requirements, the extent of the same, cost and focus of the Indian companies to generics and services are probably the important factors for Indian bio sector companies to evade investing in SysArris products.
What are the specific strategies adopted to survive and grow in the domestic and international market?
We seriously intend to be a player in the domestic market and in this regard we are working on solutions, which will help the Indian industry to achieve drug discovery goals at an affordable cost and time and plan to bring these to the market in the later part of 2004. In addition to that our experience and knowledge of the international market will be vital to the Indian industry as we approach the domestic market in 2004.
In the international market we are recognized as one of the very few life science informatics company and through our services and value addition to their research we expect to continue to survive and grow well.
Is it easy to source manpower in pharma, biotech software development? What are the parameters for selection in the field?
The manpower of the pharma, biotech sector are rather unique as in any other specialization and needs a long supporting period for productivity. A healthy background with a combination of informatics and life science form the basic parameters for selection.
Would you be in a position to disclose details about the project with AstraZeneca?
We are developing solutions to AstraZeneca Research India to automate a part of their drug discovery, which involves chemical screening and integrate this process with other parts of the drug discovery. It will facilitate the drug discovery process and it is expected to be delivered in the next two months. We will not be able to disclose further details on this solution at this point of time.
What are the future plans your company has chalked out?
We are now aggressively making our presence in Europe / US and working with many customers for bringing in more solutions in the biotech field and helping in their research. Apart from the physical expansion, we are expanding our domain with focus in the areas of life sciences. Our growth continues to be a combination of products and services model. Our keenness to contribute to the life science community through academic and research support is taking shape and will continue to develop.
We would like to know how the status and performance of OligoSys?
OligoSys version 2.0 has been launched with a new module siRNA and several features that help the user to improve design more efficiently.Apart from the ASP model it is available in, we also provide custom oligo design services, where we design a huge batch of oligos and provide the results to customers.
What is the status of the marketing alliance with IBM?
IBM US has shown keen interest to have OligoSys as part of life science offerings, which works on IBM Web sphere and DB2. Future alliance for the other products areas and their products being developed are also being taken up.
There was a genomics code named SNAP, what is the status of it?
OligoSys is the new product renamed from SNAPS, which helps in Oligo designing and is currently being tested and used by many oligo houses worldwide after its global launch in June 2002
What is the progress after the memorandum with the PES College in Bangalore?
The MOU with PES College to start up a centre of excellence whereby the academic students will get an opportunity to understand the needs of the industry and get hands on experience, at the same time use the centre for research in projects in the Chemoinformatics. This has taken off well and the first batch of students has been enrolled as part of their pharmacy course.
In the long run this centre will be able to generate interesting research results, IPR's and trained academics as it grows.
How are the products: Trials, ARISg, Register, Medics Respond & a Pills faring?
All the products are currently active in the market in US / Europe and marketed by our parent company. ARIS happens to be the flagship product, which is doing extremely well followed by GlobalTrials and REGISTER. Medics has been totally revamped to a new web based product renamed as MedDatM. We remain leaders in these product areas.