Indian customer will continue to see new product development
01 September 2017 | Interviews
Anthony MacDonald, who joined the company as president in September 2004, brings to Spectrum over 18 years’ experience in sales and marketing of ltration and separations related products.
SpectrumLabs.com is a global player in membrane separation technologies for the pharmaceutical, bioprocess, diagnostic and research industries. Spectrum focuses on two core technologies, Single-Use Hollow Fiber Tangential Flow Filtration and Tubular Membrane Dialysis. Spectrum’s early accomplishments include the invention of cellulosic dialysis membranes in a wide range of molecular weight cut-off ’s for the gentle puri cation of proteins, desalting enzymes and sample preparation. Sold under the trade name Spectra/Por, dialysis membranes and accessories lead the market with sales in more than seventy countries.
Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, with additional US facilities located in Dallas, TX, Houston, TX and Las Vegas, NV, has international sales offices located at Breda, Netherlands; Paris, France; Brussels, Belgium; Frankfurt, Germany; Loughborough, UK; Copenhagen, Denmark; Shanghai, China; Ritto-City, Japan; Bangalore, India and Seoul, South Korea. Spectrum products are also represented and sold through a network of distributors throughout the world.
Anthony MacDonald, who joined the company as president in September 2004, brings to Spectrum over 18 years’ experience in sales and marketing of ltration and separations related products. BioSpectrum spoke to Anthony MacDonald about the market opportunities and trends in ltration and separations related products in India.
1. Started in March last year, how was your journey of supplying products / equipment to companies in India?
So far, the results are very encouraging. Our Indian customers have accepted us with open arms. Our customers’ policies prevent us from naming them without their consent, but we have done business with almost all major biotech and pharma companies. The company was registered in March 2016 and began commercial operations in July 2016. The commercial success to date has reinforced the decision to enter the Indian market as correct. The Indian customer is knowledgeable and eager to try new innovative products to improve their performance and reduce production costs and time.
2. How do you see the market trends for ltration and separations related products in India?
India is among the top 12 biotech destinations in the world and ranks third in the Asia Pacific. The Indian biotech industry is expected to grow at 30.46 per cent CAGR to reach $100 billion by 2025. Similarly, the Indian pharma industry will be third largest pharmaceuticals market by 2020 in terms of incremental growth, expected $45 billion in revenue by 2020. The global pharmaceutical ltration market is poised to reach $22.71 billion by 2021 from $13.73 billion in 2016, at a CAGR of 10.6% from 2016 to 2021. We can expect similar growth in food processing industry also. Naturally, the India trends is very good so far. We feel we will able to support these industries with our products. Also, the FDI policies of Government of India are quite supportive and encouraging.
3. Tell us about the recent merger you have with Repligen? How it is going to help Indian customers?
The merger between Repligen and Spectrum combines the expertise of two companies whose focus is on improving biotech and biopharmaceutical processing. The result is the largest offering of membrane technology from hollow ber to cassettes ranging in pore size from 1KD to 1micron. In addition, we combine application expertise from chromatography through tangential ow ltration to perfusion. To put it more succinctly, Repligen is leading the way in bioprocessing through innovation of continuous processing. The Indian customer will continue to see new product development to make their processes more streamlined and cost effective.
4. Do you see competition in the market?
As discussed above, the ltration market is a large growing global market. India is no di erent. There are many competitors. Repligen differentiates itself from the competition by being focused on Biopharmaceutical processing. We pride ourselves on rapid product development, excellent customer service and application knowledge.
5. According to you what are key challenges before the companies in this space?
As a company, we are always focused on after sale service and delivery period. With our recent merger with Repligen we now have a larger product offering. From day one of our India operation we have approached the market with a separate dedicated technical team, who help the customer in trials, product installations, cost evaluations and after sales application support. We are developing our understanding of customers buying cycles and products of interest. Our aim is that by 2020 we will able to introduce a 24-hour delivery system to all our key account customers. Considering the geographical size of India, another challenge is to cover all regions effectively. We have taken initiative to address it. By 2020 we intend to have customer support system in all major cities.
6. What are your future plans for the company?
We want to take one step at a time. We are not in hurry to make it big overnight. Currently we are trying to build an organization which can support Indian customers both technically and commercially. Religen intends to be the leading supplier for bioprocessing products and services globally. Bangalore is our head office in India, where we already have a customer training centre and may be in future we will open our Wet Lab in Hyderabad and branches in other major cities.
7. Indian government has recently announced Innovate in India (i3) program under which it will be investing $250 million in R&D in biopharma space. Your views on this.
As I understand it, Innovate in India (i3)’s focus is academia collaboration for accelerating discovery research to early development for biopharmaceuticals. The programme focus is on the development of new vaccines, bio-therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. I feel this is a great initiative by the Government of India. India is not only rich in culture but also a global resource for technical manpower which these excellent institutes produce every year. As an organization, in the US we already have a “Training and Educational” department where we work very closely with various academic institutions. Our website has links to many articles and technical papers referencing the use of our products in applications of interest in bioprocessing.
8. What are your views on ltration and separations related products that are available to from local players and multinationals?
The India market has ltration and separations products available from all of the globally respected companies. Repligen intends to be the leader in this eld. So far, we have not faced much competition from locally sourced products. The ltration and separation segment has seen much innovation over the past several years leading to improvements in cost and speed to market for biotech companies.
