As biotechnology and Bioinformatics hold out great promise of new career openings for students, the biotech industry feels that only five per cent of the postgraduates are employable.

The main reasons attributed for such a situation is the lack of confidence and innovation ability amongst these students coming out of the colleges with a biotechnology degree. Only two out of the 10 candidates have the risk taking ability, informed Sabita Rebecca, head, life sciences practice in HR consultancy, Nobby Nazareth Associates.

Once a candidate is hired by the company, there is a need for the organisation to create within them a proper blend of corporate and academic cultures in order to succeed and manage attrition, she opined.

According to the industry, the biggest problem for getting the right talent is that biotechnology education is still in its infancy in the country. Even the research institutes and leading Indian universities are still groping in the darkness as they try to carve out a course and frame syllabus and initiate the process of preparing the first generation of biotech graduates.

The scene of biotech education today in the colleges is ill-equipped with under qualified teachers. Students are paying hefty fees, which are often over Rs 1 lakh to get a degree, and when they approach the industry they are just unemployable. Most courses do not prepare the students of what lies ahead in the industry, stated Dr. Villoo Morawala-Patell, founder and CEO Avestha Gengraine Technologies Pvt Ltd.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chairman and managing director, Biocon Limited said that currently, the biotech companies prefer to generate their own pool of human resources and train them.

The general perception is that the current biotech students are headed for no where with their degrees from biotechnology acquired from institutes and colleges that are mushrooming, stated Prof. G Padmanabhan, scientist emeritus and former director, Indian Institute of Science.

The problem of Karnataka biotech education is that too many graduates are chasing too few jobs. In Bangalore University alone there are around 50,000 undergraduates pursuing biotech degree courses while the number of companies offering jobs in biotech are a mere 100. Biotech students are naturally apprehensive that they may not be on the right track, stated Dr. MS Thimmappa, vice chancellor, Bangalore University.