Shrikumar Suryanarayan is currently the director-general of the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises of India (ABLE), headquartered in Bangalore. He is also a professor at the Department of Biotechnology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a visiting faculty at the Department for Molecular Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Besides, Shrikumar Suryanarayan is a consultant to the Department of Biotechnology, Govt of India. In an e-mail interaction with Nandita Vijay, he provided an overview of the Biotechnology sector. Excerpts:
How do you perceive the current biotechnology developments in the country?
We have made significant progress, though it has not been an all round development. Biotechnology will play an increasingly important role in society. The more we face a resource crunch, the more our current solutions become incapable of dealing with everyday problems.
The broad ability of the applications of biotechnology to touch almost every aspect of human existence is truly amazing. Biotechnology has an impact on the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the fuel we drive with and the medicines we use, to name a few. India is fortunate to have a government department that is aware of these potential applications and is actively promoting the applications of biotechnology within the country.
The industry has touched $2.5 billion. What are the factors needed to take the sector to the next level of growth?
What is missing is execution. While there is a general awareness of what is possible with biotechnology, there is a shortage of experienced people who can translate this awareness into reality.
Also, there is a dearth of people who have first-hand practical experience in the implementation of various facets of biotechnology. Manpower coupled with an entrepreneurship and risk encouraging environment is what is needed to create more biotechnology led enterprises. It is not enough to have just one Serum Institute or Biocon or even a Shantha Biotech. These enterprises were created by people who were aware of what biotechnology could do and who were willing to take risk. We need more biotechnology companies in India working on various applications of biotechnology.
Of the union government initiatives, could ABLE single out the most important effort that has helped the growth of the sector?
Without doubt, the articulation of a biotechnology strategy by the union government in the last year laid out a very important roadmap for the country. Also, it aims to correct the lacunae in the system. The biotechnology policy aims to encourage research in industry. It offers funding for innovative and potentially risky research and aims to improve the supply of highly qualified manpower, besides creating shared infrastructure of a high standard. For the first time, the government has boldly announced that it will invest up to 30 per cent of its funds to directly fund the private sector. The country has been waiting for such an approach. It is not public vs. private, but a public and private partnership.
What is ABLE's role to accelerate the growth of biotech sector?
ABLE represents the face of the biotechnology industry in India. Our member base of successful private biotechnology enterprises gives us a unique knowledge and insight into the ingredients for success. We have the heads of the most successful and innovative biotechnology companies in India as part of ABLE's executive board or as resources that we can call upon. We leverage this knowledge to partner with government to ensure effective implementation of the biotechnology strategy for the country.
Besides, ABLE also has among its members several leading educational institutions and ancillary service providers like venture capital and legal and IP services. From such a unique vantage position, we can directly connect with the government to create an optimal ecosystem in India to ensure the maximum benefits of biotechnology to the public.
Another unique feature of ABLE is that it provides a linkage for other countries to connect with India to look for synergies and business opportunities. We interface with biotechnology associations of other countries and bring forward partnership opportunities to companies in India. An example of this is the recently announced ABLE Bio-USA meet to be held in Hyderabad in September 2009.
ABLE also looks at bringing in specific knowledge and skills into India to spur biotechnology growth. An example of this is the workshop on "cGMP manufacturing of biologicals" that we are going to conduct in partnership with IBC conferences in Mumbai in October 2008. India is a potential biomanufacturing destination and it is important for Indian companies to be aware of and to comply with the latest in international regulations. Biologics manufacturing is more complicated than simple bulk chemical manufacturing and our industry must move up the learning curve and be up-to-date with the current state of knowledge in this area.
How supportive are union government's polices to nurture the entrepreneurial growth?
The union government has clearly recognised that entrepreneurship is the key to growth. The knowledge commission, headed by Sam Pitroda also applied itself to this matter and has just released its report on the subject in June 2008. In the life sciences area, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has a programme that is being formulated to address this issue and provide support to people who want to set up biotechnology enterprises. There is a specific government programme under formulation called the BIRAC, where this issue has been addressed. The government is also in the final stages of formulating a plan to encourage biotechnology entrepreneurship at the college level.
Coming to manpower, there is a serious attrition in the sector. How do you think this issue can be handled? How far has your tie-up with C-Drive HR services taken off?
There is a serious lack of skilled resources in the industry. There is a wide gap between what is taught in our colleges and what industry is looking for. Our undergraduate biotechnology courses are not geared to deliver the specialised manpower that is currently in demand. Also, at the PhD level our curriculum has failed to meet the demand. This shortage is being felt in areas of mammalian cell culture, downstream purification of proteins, biomolecule characterisation, clinical protocol writing, regulatory affairs, metabolic pathway engineering, protein formulation and stability, antibody discovery and engineering, enzyme engineering, high productivity cell line engineering and cGMP manufacturing of biologics. Our best bet is to attract more talent from the reverse brain drain pool. But this is an expensive solution.
An interesting beginning has been made by the Government of Karnataka in terms of formulating a kind of a "finishing school" where fresh graduates are put through an enrichment course that teaches them more specialised knowledge and skills. This kind of an approach can deal with skill shortages at an entry level. There are also collaborative PhD level programmes that are being planned with an Australian University to increase the supply of relevant PhD level manpower for the biotech industry. The DBT has also in its new strategy committed itself to create several new "star colleges" in life sciences all over the country as well as upgrade existing university departments.
Since biotechnology is such a broad area, looking for people with the right skills is in itself a specialised task. Our partnership with C-drive is to bring in more relevance in the search process so that the resumes that are sent to our member companies are more finely tuned to their requirements. We have received positive feedback about the quality of resumes sent to companies by C-Drive.