Demand in emerging markets is opening up newer opportunities across various sectors and life sciences companies have several compelling reasons to build their presence in these markets.

Emerging market countries are set to add 1.4 billion people to their middle classes during the next decade and will account for more than 60 percent of global gross domestic product growth between 2010 and 2016. Multi-national companies expect about 70 percent of world growth over the next five years to come from emerging markets. India and China will account for 40 percent of this.

In industries, such as life sciences where scale is important, the potential volume of emerging markets is essential to recover fixed costs and achieve competitive scale. Emerging market multi-nationals are themselves powerhouses of innovation, when it comes to developing new products for, and are beginning to compete strongly in developed markets as well. Western companies would do well to establish a "listening post" in the markets where these new contenders operate.

India is the second most-preferred destination for clinical trials in the emerging markets and seems to be focusing on drug safety management. So far, in India there are approximately 30 pharmacovigilance centers, but this number will touch 100 in the next one year, according to a member of the central government's pharmacovigilance committee.

Indian companies are positioned well to reach the performance bar set by current global players. And in India, this implies partcularly to two groups, the contract research organizations (CROs) and the traditional business process outsourcing organizations (BPOs), which offer pharmacovigilance services.