Biotech industry expected to grow despite global meltdown

India's biotechnology industry is confident of excellent augmentation in the coming years despite global meltdown.

Experts feel that the Indian biotechnology industry, which currently holds only two percent share of the global market, has the potential to grow and emerge as global player in coming years.

Expressing confidence at the prospect of biotech industry attaining the target of five billion dollars by 2010, Kiran Majumdar Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director of Biocon Limited, said agri biotech products and services will contribute a lot towards achieving this target.

"The five billion dollar target that the Biotech industry has is definitely something that is going to be attained in that time frame of 2010. And this five billion dollar market that is forecast is going to comprise largely of pharmaceutical products like vaccines and other therapeutic products. It is going to comprise of agri biotech products, which will almost comprise a billion dollars. Then we are also going to form a billion dollar component of that particular business," said Shaw.

According to a survey by Ernst and Young, India is projected as one of the emerging leaders in biotechnology, and is ranked third in the Asia-Pacific region, based on the number of biotech companies in the country.

According to another survey conducted by Association of Biotech Led Enterprises (ABLE), Indian biotech industry has reported a growth of 20 per cent during the year 2007-08.

The industry earned revenue worth 2.56 billion dollars, as against the last fiscal, which was 2.1 billion dollars. Out of this, the research services notched up growth of 500 million dollars. 250 dollars million growth was reported by bio informatics sector.

India is emerging as an important destination for biotech development requirement of global companies. The industry is also grappling with global meltdown, where it has paved way for a lot of joint ventures and collaboration in the sector.

The collaborations are being looked upon as means to bring down the cost of developing products to make the entire process quite affordable.

The scenario looks favorable for the Indian biotech firms as industry experts say, they should focus on acquiring biotechnology units in foreign countries like the US, where global meltdown has led to fall in their valuations.

Source