Waters India, which celebrated its silver jubilee in 2012, is a key player in the separations segment in the India market. The firm is expanding its headquarter in Bangalore with improved laboratories, upgraded training facilities and more office space.

When completed, the new facility will be spread across approximately 16,000 square feet floor space. Moreover, Waters India plans to focus on other new markets such as vaccines and monoclonal antibodies manufacturing. The firm also plans to expand its their portfolio in various segments such as consumables, informatics products, and liquid chromatography and leverage their established presence with customers. Waters India has become the fastest growing Waters subsidiary in the world. The strength of Waters India lies in the fact that they are particularly focused on the separations segment, which has allowed them to maintain a leadership profile.

Across the country, Waters partners with pharmaceutical companies, contract research organizations (CROs) and government agencies with the goal of expanding research capabilities, increasing laboratory efficiency, and navigating complex regulatory compliance requirements worldwide. Examples of recent partnerships include Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Lambda Therapeutic Research, the Marine and Agricultural Product Export Development Agency and India Environmental Protection Agency. BioSpectrum spoke to Mr KV Venugopalan, president, Waters India, about the future plans of the firm and the opportunities that it sees in India.

Waters has been growing well in India? Where do you see the growth coming in the future?
Waters is the technology leader in five complimentary technologies, including liquid chromatography (LC), mass spectrometry (MS), informatics, columns and consumables and analytical standards. In India we have a strong presence in all segments of markets particularly the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry. Since this segment of the market continues to grow, we expect our business also to follow suit.

There has been some slowing down in the CRO market due to various regulatory issues. Now that such issues are being addressed, we expect the business to catch up in those sectors also. Food safety and environmental market is fast growing in India with mega investments planned by Government of India through FSSAI, we expect a fair share of that opportunity to come in our favor.

What opportunities does Waters in India?
Waters is one of the largest analytical companies in India and has been growing at rapid pace for the past many years. Since Waters is the technology and innovation leader in the industry and takes pride in being a company focused in customer success, we always see great interest in our products by all segments of users. We act as a partner to our customers and work hard towards their success, which in due course of time ensures our success too.

Do you feel that the market competition is affecting the growth of the company?
There has always been competition in the market. LC is the single largest segment in the analytical industry and therefore has the severest competition. Due to technological leadership, high performing and superior products and customer-focused programs and activities, we were able to hold our leadership position in the market for such a long time.

Even under difficult economic conditions, when overall market and business shrunk during 2009 and marginally in 2012, our resolve to provide even better support to all our customers have only strengthened. We continue to focus on improving productivity of our customer labs and help them reduce overall costs by using advanced technology in a better way. And that is our strength

What are your future plans for the company in the coming years?
Waters India is the first analytical company in the country to start direct operation, way back in 1988 through a joint venture manufacturing operations. Since then, our company has invested in creating one of the best infrastructure and organization in India, comparable to the best anywhere in the world to support our customers.

We are also setting up global centers of excellence in India for specific applications and the first one is on regulated bio-analysis. Applications are developed here in India for customers around the world and we support them. More such centers are likely to be established in future. We will continue to introduce new technologies and products to ensure our continued position as the technology and innovation leader and we can expect some during Pittcon and ASMS in 2013.