Rank 1

Ahead with inorganic growth

With estimated sales of Rs 395 crore, India is today a major hub for Thermo Fisher Scientific's global growth strategies.

Thermo Fisher Scientific (TFS), earlier known in India as Thermo Electron LLS India, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Massachusetts-based Thermo Fisher Scientific, a leader in serving science. It is a supplier of analytical instruments, scientific, laboratory instruments and consumables. It also offers integrated reagents to enable integrated laboratory workflow solutions. The entity is the result of the coming together of Thermo Electron and Fisher Scientific in 2006.

TFS in India clocked total sales of Rs 394.6 crore from its life science focused business. In fiscal 2006-07, the company's estimated life science business was Rs 246 crore. The company attributes its success on account of both organic growth as well as the acquisitions that it made during the last few years. The company also has a new vice president and general manager in Koos Van Der Steuijt, who will be engaged in integrating the different businesses of the company including the clinical services business coming up in Ahmedabad.

Last year, TFS announced the acquisition of Qualigens Fine Chemicals, a division of GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals Ltd (GSK India). With 150 employees across the country, the turnover from this business alone was approximately Rs 96 crore in 2006. "Thermo was also looking for a well equipped team. This acquisition will be of great help for our chemicals, diagnostics and glass ware," said Dr G Ramakrishnan, managing director, Thermo Electron LLS, India Ltd.

TFS recently announced the acquisition of the analytical technologies and environment instrumentation divisions of Chemito Technologies Pvt Ltd headquartered in Mumbai. Chemito manufactures its own analytical instruments, including gas chromatography, atomic absorption and UV-Vis spectroscopy. These two divisions of Chemito have annual revenues of approximately Rs 40 crore and will be integrated into TFS' analytical technologies business. "Chemito gives us a manufacturing base in Nasik and thus strengthen our analytical instrument base in India," Ramakrishnan said.

The laboratory products division too has made a lot of progress during the past fiscal. "We have achieved a very strong double digit growth in India. Some of the key factors that contributed to this growth were increase in our field sales and service teams and strengthening of our supply chain initiatives to enhance the customer experience," said Amit Chopra, managing director-India, laboratory products, TFS.

The division is also implementing a new customer relationship management (CRM) package. "Several of our service engineers are being continuously trained in our sites in the US, Europe and Asia and we have launched several new high-end equipment and consumables for the bio-processing, pharmaceuticals and healthcare industries," added Chopra.

TFS has also focused on providing integrated workflow solutions to areas in scientific research, such as stem cell research, IVF and cell culture. "It is our endeavor to continuously partner with our customers to improve their R&D productivity and effectiveness," summed up Chopra.