'B'luru will lead our global core tech development'

The $17-billion Thermo Fisher Scientific describes itself as the world leader in serving science. This Life Sciences company enjoys a low profile since its business is not consumer-facing. Its customers are pharma, hospital chains, government and private labs, and research institutions. Deccan Herald’s Georgy S Thomas recently met Ravi Shastri, Managing Director, Life Science Solutions for South Asia, to know more about the company’s plans for India. Excerpts:

Is yours a Medical Devices company?

No. If you take the healthcare sector, there are hospitals, labs, pharma, medical devices firms, etc. Ours is a Life Sciences company which helps all these players do their functions well. We create the chemicals, instruments, and technology necessary for all of them.

Can you break down the company’s global revenues into segments?

Sure. The biggest is Lab Products which contributes up to 37 per cent of revenues. Under this we have laboratory equipment, lab plasticware, glassware, and supplies. Then comes Life Sciences Solutions which contributes up to 26 per cent. Here we do molecular research, DNA sequencing, and produce testing kits for viruses and bacteria (H1N1, Ebola, E.coli). Our kits find huge use in paternity tests. Our Speciality Diagnostic division (19 per cent) makes kits to detect drug abuse and drunken driving. If athletes at the Olympics are caught doping, you can thank our testing kits. Also, clinical diagnosis and monitoring of allergies. Analytical Instruments bring in another 18 per cent. Testing food contamination is big for us. Adulteration of milk, origins of food. Is that cheese Parmesan, and the wine Bordeaux? We can test it. Our machines find their use in industry to test the purity of gold, cement, coal, etc. We can detect nano-level purity of gold and silver, and for that matter anything. And these machines are huge, typically costing $500,000 to $ 1 million.

Who are your competitors?

It depends upon the industry vertical. GE is a competitor in some product lines of Life Sciences Solutions. Also EMD Millipore and Bio-Rad Laboratories. Illumina is a competitor in genome sequencing. Roche Diagnostics competes with us in Specialty Diagnostics. Corning and Agilent Technologies vie for market share with us in Analytical Instruments.
 
Could you tell us about your operations in India?

We are about 1,200-strong and did revenues of $200 million in the calendar year ending December 2014. This year we have set an ambitious growth target of 13-14 per cent for the Life Sciences Solutions business and 20-25 per cent for the group.

How are going to achieve your growth targets?

We are going to make Bengaluru our core technology development centre for the world. And we are also going to scale up our research and development (R&D) centre, also located in the city. We have currently 45 people in the R&D centre, which we hope to double in a year. Our technology development centre now employs 150 people. We hope to recruit another 250 in a year’s time.

Aren’t you a bit late to the game of doing technology development from India?

We are not late because the technologies are also new. And it is also patented technology. You do not just give it to anybody. It is very specialised Life Sciences software programming. We are planning to develop it for the world. The confusion would be due to the claims by traditional information technology (IT) companies that they are big in Life Sciences. What they really do is make IT solutions for pharma like running ERP and operations packages. Ours is a combination of biology and computer science. To test one gene, you need to understand the combination of three  billion pairs of equations. For that you need high level semiconductors. That is the level of technology that we are going to use. Again, biotechnology firms rely on bioinformatics (IT) to analyse the research data. The company has developed its own cloud suite called Thermo Fisher Cloud. The entire cloud software support team will be based out of the global excellence centre in India.
 
What will the R&D centre be doing?

The R&D centre will be developing products. We have cutting-edge research going on in monoclonal antibodies and protein biology. We sell the products to scientists in research institutes.

From where will you be recruiting and what kind of candidates are you looking for?

For R&D, typically we look out for PhDs in Life Sciences, Molecular Biology, Genetic Engineering, Oncology, Drug Discovery, etc. For the technology side,we look for good background in IT with an aptitude for life sciences. We go to IITs, the IISc and similar institutes, and other universities. We have a campus recruitment programme.

Are all your products available in India?

Yes everything. We have a 25,000 square feet warehouse in Bengaluru which supplies not only for india, but the whole of South Asia. All our products are stocked in our warehouse. We are not running on a buy and sell basis. We have facilities in 40 locations in India, including the country’s first private DNA forensics lab in Delhi.