Its Asian century of biotech

3-day Bio-Asia starts in Hyderabad

By labelling the 21st century as the 'Asian Century of Biotech', R A Mashelkar, the director-general of Council of Scientific and Industrial Relations, echoed the consensus of a large gathering of biotechnopreneurs, venture capitalists and government representatives.

Taking note of the exuberant optimism about the country's economic growth, Mashelkar said that India was emerging as the global R&D platform, thus reserving a place of prominence among the comity of Asian countries.

In this regard, he quoted GE chief Jack Welsh as saying that India had the highest intellectual capital and hence their decision to shift a significant size of GE's R&D activities to India.

At present, over top 100 companies in the country had already set up their R&D bases in the country, and more entrants were in the offing, he added.

In his special address at the summit, the first of its kind in Asia, he also traced the history of R&D in the country. He said that the academia-industry interaction and collaboration was at a new high.

S Ramadorai, the head of TCS, observed that Asia in general and India in particular, with its proven IT expertise, were strongly pitching in for a place of pride in the biotechnology field as well.

The head of the largest IT company in the country observed that strong IT skills coupled with domain expertise augured well for a leading role by the nation in the future. The next 50 years would be an era of biology and the country had a lot to gain, he said.

The pharmaceutical segment alone was poised to touch $60 billion by 2008 and bioinformatics would account for 10 per cent of this, he said, painting a rosy picture for India both in IT and BT areas. TCS would soon launch its flagship bioinformatics product 'Bio Suite,' being developed in Hyderabad, Ramadorai disclosed.

M K Bhan, the secretary-designate of department of biotechnology (DBT), assured the Indian biotech industry that there would a stronger policy support from the government in the product regime. Jannie Tay, the CEO of Singapore-based Save The Technologies, dwelt on the subject of bioethics and biosafety.

She said her organisation was striving to encourage best practices in Asia as were prevalent in the developed countries. She also saw a bright future ahead for the continent in the decades to come.

M S Swaminathan, the UNESCO cousteau chair in ecotechnology and chairman of MS Swaminathan Foundation, was conferred Genome Valley Excellence Award by the state governor, Surjit Singh Barnala.

It is a life-time achievement award for the promotion of biotechnology in the country. The award will also be conferred on William Rutter of Chiron Corporation, US, tomorrow.

In his address, Swaminathan took note of Asia's growing prominence in the area of biotechnology. However, he pleaded that while Asia would become a major BT player, the continent needed to address the issue of food security with active research going into the major staple food -rice.

On the occasion, ICICI Knowledge Park ( IKP), and Shapoorji Pallonji (SP) Biotech Park issued plot allotment letters to four companies. Sigma-Aldrich from the US and two companies from the city "� SaiDru Syl Limited and Avra Laboratories "� will come up at IKP, while Institute of Bioinformatics will be located at the SP Biotech Park.

IKP chief executive Deepanwita Chattopadhyay and SP Biotech Park CEO S Dhawan issued the letters in the presence of the governor.

Earlier, state industries and commerce secretary B P Acharya read out messages from President Abdul Kalam and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

D Balasubramanian, the chairman of AP State Biotech Advisory Committee, welcomed the gathering, recounting biotechnology development with a special reference to Asia and India. D Nalini Mohan, additional secretary (industries & commerce), Andhra Pradesh, proposed the vote of thanks.