Dr Villoo Morawala Patell, Founder & CEO, Avestha Gengraine Technologies, sees her company evolving into a biotechnology conglomerate where it is working to provide innovative solutions for global challenges in agriculture and health problems - degenerative conditions, metabolic disorders and infectious diseases.

Dr Patell is a doctorate in plant molecular biology from University of Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg in France with a Post-doctoral tenure from University of Ghent, Belgium. She has received several prestigious grants from Institutions including The Rockefeller Foundation, Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (IFCPAR) and DFID.

In an interview with Nandita Vijay of Pharmabiz.com, Dr Patell delves into various issues of the biotech sector and also provides glimpses of her company's focus on the convergence between food, pharma and clinical genomics leading to preventive personalised medicine. Excerpts:

Are you of the opinion that the Government of India's initiatives to give a fillip to biotechnology would help the new breed of scientist entrepreneurs?

The Government of India's initiatives are laudable and their programmes would bring out a new breed of scientist entrepreneurs, which is what the country needs to catapult itself into the next phase of growth.

What is the lacunae in the biotechnology sector today in the country?

The lacunae is in the lack of quality standards, manpower and most importantly finding people who are willing to grow with the organisation is near impossible.

The biotechnology sector needs to provide attractive incentives to avoid attrition. One sees the same old faces moving from industry to industry for a few dollars more because most entrepreneurs tend to poach staff from other companies where technology is being created.

What are the possible suggestions that a scientist entrepreneur like you can provide to give a boost to the sector?

We need a change of operation methodologies at the Central Board of Excise and Customs to eliminate the middlemen. Movement of consumables are stalled because of cumbersome custom procedures. The agencies handling reagents, equipment and consumables increase prices which makes it expensive.

How different is the environment in India compared to the West for biotech science entrepreneurs?

The working environment is different in each country. Unlike India, there is enormous support for ideas and innovation and there is no price to pay for failure. In India, the entrepreneur is criticized for failures. For one successful idea, there are 99 failures and that is why innovation succeeds in the USA because the scientist entrepreneur gets support from his institution, government, venture capital community and from the market to start an enterprise. In case, the person fails, he just starts all over again and people look at failure as an experience rather than a disaster. If this mentality and environment is created in India, then there will be more entrepreneurs from universities and we will see an avalanche of innovation.

How do you perceive the current biotechnology scene in the country?

The biotechnology scene is picking up but there are still few players who could sustain and survive because of several lapses in the business model. In fact, everyone wants to get into bio generics. My opinion is that only the serious drug discovery companies will win the race. The business of bio generics is a short-term effort.

Avestha Gengraine Technologies is now three-year-old, what kind of an organisation is it evolving into?

As a three-year-old company, Avestha is evolving into a biotechnology conglomerate specialising in agriculture and pharma.

What is the status of your associations with AstraZeneca and BioMérieux?

Both the projects are ongoing and we have moved in for the Phase II collaborative research initiatives. With AstraZeneca, Avesthagen is associated for Metabolomics - a study of human cell responses to various drugs. Our association with BioMérieux has been to develop a novel diagnostic and holistic chip using virulent factors for tuberculosis (TB) which would detect not only infected patients but also latent TB cases.

Would you be able to share the company's initiatives in contract research in life sciences?

Avesthagen is into R&D co-development and not contract research. We have already proved our skills associating with AstraZeneca, Bio Merieux and our collaboration with Cipla. There are several joint R&D project works in the pipeline, which include Emergent Genetics Inc, a seed-related biotechnology company and Advanta, another leading player in the global seed market.

What are the strengths of the company?

Our platform is varied where our biotech competencies put together are at a cutting-edge, totally synchronised in a system biology manner. This system biology platform is what global companies are trying to do. Today, the major emphasis of large labs in the US and Europe is to create system biology platforms. Avesthagen's technology driven to address almost any organism and it has achieved a system biology platform.

The biotechnology competencies that have been put into place can sift and sieve information to execute biology. We are not only doing the sifting and sieving at the information technology level but also executing it practically at the biological level. That is Avesthagen's strength. We call ourselves true biotechnology company, which is an innovator and ideator generating new products in the pipeline in food, pharma and population genetics (diagnostics for preventive and personalised healthcare). We are actually in the process of product creation with partners. So we participating in the research, development, application and marketing which is how a biotech industry works.

What are the future plans of your company?

We are trying to get more space. Plans are underway to expand into a new premises in ITPL. Current manpower is 120, efforts are on to hire in the areas of RPO.