Wipro BioMed, part of Wipro Healthcare and Life Science, the new business unit launched by Wipro Limited early this year, has entered into the laboratory segment to address the healthcare and life sciences market.

Guttina Subrahmanyam, marketing manager, Wipro BioMed told Pharmabiz.com in an interview over e-mail that the main reasons for Wipro to enter into the laboratory products spectrum is to tap the promising opportunities both in research institutes, universities, R&D for life science products apart from hospitals and diagnostic labs across the country for healthcare products.

Wipro Biomed set up in December 1988 contributes about 15 per cent of earnings to the turnover of Wipro Health Life Science.

“The investment of this division is only manpower and office space as we do not manufacture anything in India,” said Guttina Subrahmanyam.

The laboratory products for pharma, biotech and R&D laboratories from Wipro include centrifuges, spectrophotometers, liquid and gas chromatography systems, DNA sequencers, flow cytometers, low and high throughput robotic workstations. “We represent two companies in India: Beckman Coulter and Agilent (formerly HP),” informed Guttina Subrahmanyam.

“The companies that Wipro represent are the world leaders in their respective product range and we enjoy the same market share as elsewhere in the world in most of the products that we sell in India,” he said. These products have proven record of being used in the similar set-up elsewhere in the world and have product specific features and benefits.

According to Guttina Subrahmanyam, the products, which have the highest brand recall are ultracentrifuges, spectrophotometers from Beckman Coulter, gas chromatography and liquid chromatography systems from Agilent.

The marketing strategy to promote the products is by participating in conferences and seminars periodically held in the country. The other medium of publicity is by participating at national exhibitions. Apart from that any new technology will be propagated by site specific seminars at customer locations.

On the pricing of products, Guttina Subrahmanyam said, “Since the products are manufactured by the principals outside India, we follow their price list. There will be a small percentage variation, which depends on the competition, market potential, market share.”

The total addressable market size in India is about $ 35M for analytical products. He however refused to divulge the performance figures, as it is part of Wipro Healthcare and Life Science.

About the market in Karnataka, Guttina Subrahmanyam said that there is a demand for laboratory products in the State. “We have our installations at premier institutions like Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB), Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Studies (JNCAS), National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Jack Welch Centre, Central Food Technology Research Institute (CFTRI) and the industries like Biocon India Group, Astra Zeneca, Avasthagen, Gangagen, Himalaya Drugs company.”

The most promising market for Wipro in India with reference to states or geographical regions, it is almost equal, informed Guttina Subrahmanyam.

For laboratory products in India, Wipro Biomed enjoys close to 70 per cent market share in some niche product ranges. “Overall we are the one of the very few companies who can provide a wide range of products to set up an R&D or a diagnostic laboratory,” he said.

The competition for the company in laboratory products worldwide and in India depends on the product range. “Since we represent companies in India the total available range with Wipro is very large,” he said.

On how Wipro stands apart from competition, Guttina Subrahmanyam averred that it is definitely quality both in terms of the product and also the quality of support structure provided locally by Wipro. This includes the after sales service (ISO 9002 certified), application support (eight scientists on board) and the domain knowledge in the sales team (all from science back ground).

On the future prospects of the division Guttina Subrahmanyam said, “We want to strengthen our presence in biotechnology with innovative products to address the high throughput screening for genetic analysis (genomics and proteomics) and new drug discovery.”