Celestial Labs Limited, a Hyderabad-based biotechnology company, is planning to hire 300 technical and scientific personnel for its upcoming biotechnology facility at Genome Valley in Hyderabad. The recruitment is to fill the required human resources for research and manufacturing facility for enzymes like alpha amylase and alkaline protease.

The facility which is scheduled to become operational by early 2008 is being developed on a seven acres land, of which four acre is for industrial enzyme project, and remaining for setting up bioinformatics centre, drug development centre, and a wet lab.

Currently, the company has around 90 staff and eight scientists. "We are planning to get on board some 300-400 experienced personnel with strong industrial biotechnology and research background as soon as the project is completed," Dr A N Singh, managing director of the company told Pharmabiz.

Explaining about the business plan, he says, the projected investment for the entire venture is estimated to be between Rs 40 to Rs 50 crore. The company is entering capital market by mid June this year to mobilise capital for the venture. The facility is being developed to leverage technical expertise in industrial biotechnology for high value growth in coming years. The company has also received business interest queries from Germany, the UK and the US based companies.

Earlier the IPO was scheduled for March. Because of the procedural clarification by NSE, it has been rescheduled for June, he says. Funding for research and development is backed by Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) whereas the public money will be used for establishing the entire structure.

When asked about why the company is looking at enzymes, Singh says, nearly 70 per cent of enzymes are still being imported and indigenous production is only 30 per cent. "As we already have technical expertise with us, we are looking at a good market share in the country. With the completion of the project, the total installed capacity will be 20,000 litters of alpha amylase and alkaline protease respectively a year from its enzymes unit," he informs.

According to Singh, the global market for industrial enzyme by 2010 is estimated to be $ 3 billion US. Two years back the industry was unaware of the market potential, but now the awareness is increasing. If harnessed carefully, there is immense scope for Indian companies to grab nearly 30-34 per cent of the total market.

The ISO 9001:2000 certified company has two patents for bio-molecules under its belt for anti-cancer and vitiligo drugs and has filed another patent for Celsuite. 'Celsuite' is a computer aided drug design tool helpful in developing peptide drug through rDNA technique. 'With this tool the company's can save around 15-20 hours in drug developing process' he said.

The pre-clinical trials for vitiligo drug have been completed and the company is in talks with city based hospitals like Owaisi Hospital and Unani General Hospital. The product would be ready for licensing by 2009. 'We would offer the bio-molecules for commercialisation wherein our service and product go together', he added.

As of now the research and development is being done at CCMB (Centre for Cellular and Microbial Biology) and its wet labs, once the project is ready the company would conduct in house R&D, he said. It also has collaboration with IMTECH (Institute of Microbial Technology), Chandigarh for R&D purpose.