Why India is becoming one of the major source points for lab equipment?
a) For knowledge-intensive industries such as those described earlier, India has a good pool of scientific talent available at a very low cost. An English speaking population is another advantage that India has over other developing countries.
b) Good IT infrastructure and knowledge is available in abundance in India.
c) India boasts of a network of institutes busy in basic and applied research. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the government body to promote scientific research, has a network of 40 laboratories, 80 field stations and 22,000 trained personnel. Also India has 29 agriculture universities and 204 central and state universities. The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has more than 75,000 employees working for various science discoveries. Both research and education are on the boom with the obvious implications for lab equipment manufacturers.
d) Favorable Policies - The biotechnology industry will be exempted from the payment of entry tax on all inputs as well as capital goods, including captive generation sets, during the implementation stage, which can be up to 5 years or during the construction period whichever is earlier. Several states have taken their own initiatives in terms of defining their own biotech policies to give an impetus to the industry in this sector and to biotechnology in India as a whole.
f) Low cost of R&D - It is believed that in India, the operational cost of R&D is one tenth of that of more developed countries. Also the trend to outsource R&D in biotechnology is increasing. This represents a tremendous opportunity for Indian companies to do contract research for overseas corporations. The current global spend on outsourced R&D is approximately $7 billion and is expected to grow at 30% per annum for the next 5 years. Typically, opportunities exist in basic gene sequencing work, cDNA library preparation, genetic research related to medical diagnostics, new crop varieties and early stage drug development. Contract research organizations (CROs) have great potential to function as export oriented units and are comparable in their activity to the software development activities in the IT sector.
g) Govt. Initiatives - The Indian government has set up a separate Department of Biotechnology under the Ministry of Science & Technology. The Department's objective is to involve the scientific community in promoting India as a biotechnology destination. Furthermore, the government in order to attract foreign investment in the biotechnology sector has established 'single window clearance system' for quick approval. It allows establishment of 100% foreign owned company where the proposal is to establish a research & development laboratory with the production facilities.

(The author is marketing specialist, Millipore India Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore)