IT solutions major HCL is gearing up to expand its activities in India and abroad to provide domain-centric cost effective IT & ITES solutions in drug discovery, manufacturing, regulatory services in life sciences space and systems integration and business process re-engineering in healthcare sector.

Currently the company is the preferred partner for 10 out of top 15 global pharmaceutical companies and 7 out of the top 10 medical device OEMs and hospitals worldwide.

The plans to expand markets came about for HCL as life science and healthcare companies have realised that higher efficiencies to sustain competitive advantage and economies of scale can be achieved with its solutions, according to Apurva Chamaria, group manager, Life Sciences, Healthcare, Retail, CPG & 3PL, HCL Technologies.

In this connection, HCL has devised a blue-ocean strategy to offer innovative solutions like application portfolio optimization, supply chain and consulting. Domain expertise being a critical factor in the life sciences and healthcare space, it also provides value-add solutions in drug discovery, manufacturing and regulatory areas with its Equipment Log Manager or the eCTD submission manager, Panax Finder. When data management process is outsourced to HCL, companies have been able to reduce the costs. In fact, substantial savings can be brought down with reengineering of processes too by over 50 to 60percent.

"We deploy the best practices from different industries with a domain centric approach to solve the problems and bring transformation in the client's practices," Apurva Chamaria added. Although a major chunk of its customers are in the US, the company has also done substantial work for Indian pharmaceutical and biotech companies which includes integrated SPL and manufacturing solutions. There is an increased interest towards looking at vendors for core domain IT related work in drug discovery and regulatory areas and this is where HCL intends to grab the opportunity.

Investments required for HCL solution depends on the technology, time horizon and scale of operations There is no 'one size that fits all' for companies operating in different domains, said Chamaria. The main competition for HCL is from Cognizant and Wipro and in the area of multi-country outsourcing projects coming India's way, expertise of IBM, CSC, Capgemini, and EDS are also to be considered. Presence of small domain IT service providers cannot be ignored as they offer cutting-edge and inexpensive solutions, he said. HCL has a 1500 plus team of life sciences & healthcare domain and technical consultants who have over two decades experience.