Waters India, the lab instrumentation major is investing Rs 10 crore to set up Technology Centres of Excellence across the country. The first of these centres are expected to come up in Mumbai, New Delhi and Hyderabad before the end of this year.

The centres are expected to provide a major fillip to the scientific research efforts in the country. The labs will allow customers to maximize the utilization of mass spectrometry (MS) and UPLC (Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography) instruments, K V Venugopalan, president, Waters India told Pharmabiz.

As part of the expansion efforts and the industry demands, specially for UPLC and MS instruments, Waters India is also augmenting its personnel strength from the current 210 to 245.

The need to set up the Technology Centres of Excellence is driven by the robust business prospects in the life sciences space. Visible trends indicate that there is huge growth potential in contract research, which includes clinical trials and contract manufacturing, especially generics. This is because global majors are evincing considerable interest in India which automatically makes the companies here to upgrade their facilities and go in for additional instruments. Waters India will go ahead to tap every opportunity on hand, stated Venugopalan.

The key technologies of the company include liquid chromatography, chemistries, MS and Informatics. Maximum investments by labs across the world are for LC and MS. Just like the global markets, in India too, MS and UPLC are the growth drivers of the company. The application of these instruments in the areas of pharmaceuticals which is new drug delivery initiatives, impurity profiling, BA/BE studies in clinical trials are helping Waters India to drive the sales.

In India, Mass Spectrometry market is valued at $80 million and registering a growth of 35 percent annually. The MS instruments help to increase customer productivity, revenues, margins, and reduce costs at laboratories in the pharmaceuticals, bio-pharma, proteomics, clinical, forensic sciences, food safety and environmental space.

MS is a fast evolving area like chromatography. The MS expertise ensued after the parent company Waters Corporation acquired Micro Mass. So far, scientists have been facing the challenges of sensitivity, speed and reproducibility, but now with Xevo Tandem Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (TQ MS) it will make a huge difference to the labs researchers in the country.

The Indian lab market is estimated at Rs 1,500 crore and growing at 18 per cent per annum. The key drivers are HPLC and LCMS among the analytical instruments.