With increasing number of global pharma companies turning to India for clinical trials and related work, as a side effect of business growth,attrition rates as well as average salary packages of professionals in the Indian clinical research industry is likely to go up in 2011-12.
While attrition rates are likely to be in the range of 20-30 per cent this year, the resource crunch can almost double the entry-level salaries by 2012.
Entry level salaries in the clinical research industry at present are in the range of Rs 2.5 -3.5 lakh varying with locations. Normal attrition rates in the industry range between 8-15 per cent.
The Indian clinical research industry had seen a drop of 10 per cent business in 2008-09, and a 15-20 per cent dip during 2009-10. Thanks to new business generation, this year the industry is likely to grow by 20 per cent, informed Bharat Doshi, senior director, South East Asia/India, global clinical development, Kendle, the fifth largest clinical research organisation in the world.
Apurva Shah, group managing director, Veeda Clinical Research said,"The large and medium pharmaceutical companies have started coming back to India with more inquiries and a renewed interest. With the large mergers settling down and the product portfolios getting finalised more sponsors are coming to India. Moreover, the large multinational companies who have entered the generics business again have also shown greater interest in working with us in India."
According to industry estimates, the Indian clinical research organisations (CRO) market size is around $0.3 billion, and is expected to touch $1 billion by 2014. By 2012, analysts project that more than 65 per cent of all FDA regulated trials will take place outside the United States.
This is reflected in the Indian biotechnology market, which is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 30 per cent, and the Indian CRO market, which is expected to see growth of 49 per cent annually. In contrast, India presently lacks in Good Clinical Practices (GCP) trained investigators, whose number according to rough industry estimates, is pegged at around 1000-1200 at present. Their demand is projected to reach between 4500-7000 by 2011.
As more business comes in, people turnover is also set to rise. As Doshi says, "Within clinical research too there are different verticals. For mature verticals like clinical trials, the resource crunch would be slightly less, but in areas like data operations etc, which are relatively new, the paucity of resources would lead to higher people turnover. This means in these areas there would be huge opportunities of salary hikes."
As such, salaries of clinical data specialists and medical writers in India are around 15 per cent and 9 per cent respectively of what they get in the US.
Shah of Veeda CR points out, "Professionals have now become smart. They have realised that it's better for their career to choose the right employer. In today's environment a professional looks towards stability and quality of the company rather than take-home packages and position."
While Veeda has been receiving resumes regularly, Shah says that the smaller CROs are likely to have problems with people retention.
The Gujarat market accounts for nearly 15 per cent of the national turnover in the clinical research industry, while Mumbai and Bangalore contribute 25 per cent each.
This is because CROs in Mumbai and Bangalore deal in value-added services. Gujarat, at the same time, accounts for nearly 20-25 per cent of the net number of volunteers in India.
However, in the last two-three years even some of the national and global CROs which have operations in Gujarat have started doing higher-end work like pre-market studies as well as new research molecule related work.
