Asia Pacific (APAC) has been a region of utmost importance for Sigma-Aldrich (SA) as it has contributed more than 20 percent of global sales last year. Strengthening its position further, the company in February opened a 45,000 sq ft global shared services (GSS) Center in Bangalore to support the company globally by offering value-added capabilities to drive business growth and accelerate operational excellence.

The opening of the new GSS center follows the recent celebration of SA's 20 year anniversary of conducting business in India. The company has showcased noteworthy Asia Pacific investments in the last few years including opening a new packaging facility in Bangalore, India; opening of a new facility in WuXi, China and completion of a new SAFC Hitech precursor manufacturing facility in Taiwan.

BioSpectrum talks to Ms Karen J Miller, senior vice president, corporate development and corporate communications and Mr Jason Apter, vice president and managing director, Asia Pacifc, Sigma-Aldrich, to understand more about the new GSS center and about the company's focus on APAC.

How will the GSS center add benefit to SA's business?
Ms Miller: One of the objectives is to support our business growth whether support with new product introduction, pricing, or the work we are doing on the web to get our products positioned in a way that our product is on top of the mind when scientists do Google searches. Second is the operations in which cost efficiency factor associated with it. In order to remain competitive, we are looking at market expansion and this is an opportunity to drive market expansion. We also have such a wonderful access here in Bangalore to the kind of talent that we are looking for specifically in scientific area.

What made you choose India for opening GSS?
Ms Miller: First of all we already had an established based and an established leadership team in India. Since 2005, we have had small shared service center and then we made the decision to scale that up. And again we have had great success with the talent and quality of work here.