Having completed phase-I and phase-II successfully, ICICI Knowledge Park at Turkapally, near Hyderabad, is all set to launch phase-III. The state government will release Rs 5 crore and the work will start by October/ November. The state government's commitment came from Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu during his talks with N Vaghul, Chairman, ICICI Knowledge Park, R A Mashelkar, Director-General of CSIR, and Ahsok S Ganguly, Director-General of ICMR, both Directors of the Park's Board.

Talking to Chronicle Pharmabiz, Deepanwita Chhatopadhyaya, CEO, said all the 10 modules in the first phase had been occupied. In the second phase, all the 16 modules had been booked. While three had occupied already, seven companies would be moving in by November and the rest by March 2004. She said Rs 40 crore had been invested so far on the project. Asked about the progress of the Park so far she said the last two years had been promising and the coming two years would be very important as more and more companies would be investing in biotechnology.

The companies that have already set up units in the Park include GVK Biosciences, Matrix Laboratories, Optiwave Photonics, Bioserve Biotechnologies, Krebs Biochemicals, Sai Dru Syn Laboratories, Indigene Pharmaceuticals, Helvetica Pharmaceuticals, Bijam Biosciences and IICT. In addition, the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Development Corpn (APIDC) ha s set up a Patent Facilitating Cell in the Park.

Chattopadhyaya said the Park was already showing the impact of a biotech cluster with several companies coming together and sharing their facilities. GVK Biotech had NMR and LCMS facilities in the Park, while Bioserve Biotechnolgy had a DNA sequensor and Sai Dru Syn had a lab to conduct analytical tests, which were being shared by all the tenant companies. Even the adjacent Bharat Biotech was using these facilities in the Park. In addition, the Park has an MoU with the Apollo Hospitals to support the clinical research activities of companies doing research in the Park."There was synergy with several biotech units coming together under one roof," she said.

Chattopadhyaya said one of the units in the Park, Optiwave Photonics promoted by Srinivas and Krishna Kumar had developed the prototype of a laser-based hardware device. In less than its leased time of three years, the company would be going into the production stage of the device. " We are very proud of this success," she said.

Though Indian companies and NRIs have, by and large, started responding, multinational companies are worried about Intellectual Property Rights. Another important factor is that many foreign companies and NRIs are not aware of the world-class facilities being provided at the Park. It needs good marketing efforts, according to Deepanwita.

She disclosed that the Park was planning to set up a Pharma Incubator, like the proposed Biotech Incubator in the Biotech Park, to attract potential investors in the pharma sector.

She said the rainwater-harvesting programme at the Park had been successful with the ground water level rising substantially. Tenants can buy customised R&D centres in the modular units or land plots. The modular units are ready-to-use laboratories with in-built flexibility to accommodate modifications.

Chattopadhyaya, who appeared very happy over the success of the Park, said her goal was to attract major IPR-driven companies to set up their R&D facilities in the Park and help the country in reversing the brain drain.