The recent statistics indicate that the Indian pharmaceutical market is currently valued at USD25 billion and is expected to further grow at a CAGR of 12 per cent till 2020.
India is the third largest pharmaceutical market in the world by incremental growth and seventh largest by volume, which gives a plethora of opportunities for many life sciences companies. With India's population expected to reach 1.4 billion in 2022 (per the 2015 UN Report on World Population), this growing population demands not only large scale production of vaccines but also research for newer vaccines relevant to India and immunotherapy. In order to meet the growing demands of the denizens of the country, Corning Life Sciences, one of the leaders in developing, manufacturing and global supplier of scientific laboratory products for over 100 years, has rolled its sleeves to achieve its goal. Outside of US, India and China are two of the biggest markets for Corning Life Sciences (CLS).
In a recent conversation with BioSpectrum, Dr. Richard M. Eglen, Vice President and General Manager, Corning Life Sciences (CLS), revealed the expansion plans of CLS and how the company is gearing up to achieve its goal.
How does Corning Life Sciences see the Asian pharmaceutical market as one of the prominent domains to carry out its business operations?
One of the major reasons why we have entered the Asian market is the rapid growth in the pharmaceutical market; that, coupled with the rate at which the population is growing, which is higher than any other continent. This rapid growth in population is creating a great demand for new types of medicines and also allowing us to bring a wide range of our products in this lucrative market. Another reason that brought us here is the booming market; if you compare the growth in Asia to USA's market, it is almost twice of America.
As we develop new products in life sciences, we felt that these are also perfectly carved to address the needs of the Asian market. Currently, our major focus is on India and we plan to support the surge in vaccine production, which is in great demand.
Â
Do you consider India as one of your major platform to boost your business?
Yes, India is a very important domain for us, which is why we have invested in life sciences business here. I cannot reveal the specifics of the investment but to give an overview, we have installed a warehouse in India for our products; we have also done some major acquisition including the acquisition Becton Dickinson's Discovery Labware business in 2012. And we are continuing to bring its products in India's pharmaceuticals, biotech and CRO market.
How is your business growth in India?
We are witnessing a vibrant and energetic business growth in India. In fact, our growth in India is about six to seven per cent, which is around 1.5 per cent faster than our growth in other countries. The other factor that attracted us to India is strong interest in emerging technologies, particularly in The vaccine's production and potentially as it moves in to stem cell and immunotherapy. Since Corning Life Sciences is a 100 year old venture, when we look into the new markets to extend our product services, India is one of the lucrative and fastest growing arcades for us.
What are the key elements that you are focusing on in the Asian market?
Specifically in Asia, our goal is to bring our wide range of products to this market, including bioprocess where we see vaccine production increasing. At Corning Life Sciences, we have a broad range of products covering all the areas of life sciences research, for instance, Genomics, DNA testing, drug discovery and drug screening etc.So if we add all of that, our product range enables us to serve all the different areas of pharmaceutical and biotechnology research and also the growing CRO market.
What are the major challenges you faced when you ventured into the Asian corridors?
The major challenge was to beef up the supply chain so that we can have a strong distribution channel. This is one of the reasons why we installed a warehouse in India. Given the wide range of products that we have, supply chain, distribution and customer satisfaction are our first priority. We faced logistics problems in China as well; learning lessons from China, it was a lot easier for us to successfully install our business here in India. Last year, we opened a distribution warehouse in Liu Xiang, China, and that enables us to run a smooth distribution of our products in Asia.
India's population is scaling up rapidly so what are your plans to maintain a smooth supply chain for this swiftly growing population?
Our goal is to do three things,one of which is to have adequate products to cater the needs of our customers. The other thing that we see is of new therapies such as stem cell therapy, immunotherapy emerging to address the needs of this growing population. We have developed new products in this area. The other piece we have done is that we have developed products that enable our customers to be more efficient in their bio-production, which means optimally utilising their workflow and space.
Can you elaborate on the steps taken by the firm to nurture the immunotherapy in India and also throw some light on Serum Free Culture Media products?
Immunotherapy is rapidly growing in the market and currently it is in great demand. In Media Serum Free, the contamination level is very low so it is the most optimum solution to replace cells. The other point which is worth mentioning is that surface area is very important to grow the cells on and the more cell you grow on the surface area, the more efficient your production becomes. We have scouted many technologies to help our customers to do that.
 Nitin Konde
