Accelrys Software Solutions Private Limited has raised its workforce from 20 in 2001 to 75 with its expansion of its activities. The expansion comes in the wake of new projects it had undertaken recently. The present staff strength comprises 95 per cent from scientific and technical personnel and five per cent from support and administrative departments.

The company has a full-fledged development centre located at the International Tech Park at Whitefield in Bangalore which is responsible for the work of its parent company in the US to address the needs of major pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and chemical companies.

Since the commissioning of the facility in 2001, the focus areas of operations included software product development in the areas of bioinformatics, cheminformatics and life science modelling and quality control for all of Accelrys' product lines. The facility is one of the three Accelrys' centres of excellence. Other centres are in San Diego, CA, and Cambridge, UK.

Accelrys is evolving to become a product development centre of excellence, stated Dr Gerhard Engel, senior director, R&D, India in an email interview.
"We have invested several million dollars to date in our Bangalore R&D centre of excellence," he said without being specific about the investments.

The key reasons to set-up a base here was the ready availability of a skilled workforce for software development, good IT infrastructure, low labour costs. Within India, Bangalore stands out for its large pool of talented software developers, informed Dr. Engel.

The company was founded by bringing together five leading specialist software companies Molecular Simulations Inc. (MSI), Synopsys Scientific Systems, Oxford Molecular, Genetics Computer Group (GCG) and Synomics Ltd.

Addressing the crucial software developments needs in the pharmaceutical sector, Accelrys' major clientele include Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis.

According to Dr. Engel, competition varied with each product, no one company competed directly on all levels. However there was competition from Tripos and MDL.

"The prevailing trends in this business include the employment of new technologies, such as computer-based predictive models in the drug development process. New technology to help accelerate formulation design and development and guide active pharmaceutical ingredient selection," said Dr. Engel.