To begin with, could you please give an overview ofNavitas and its business vision for our Asia Pac readers?
Navitas, a wholly owned subsidiary of TAKE Solutions, is a pure-play 360-degree Life sciences solutions provider. The Navitas team has been assembled by bringing together the proven expert teams of TAKE Life Sciences and WCI and, adding to this core, a range of experts from the worlds of Clinical Development, Regulatory, Technology, and Consulting.

The Navitas team has been built specifically to deliver insight to clients, develop pragmatic solutions, and to support their deployment and operation. Navitas delivers advice, solutions and services in Clinical, Regulatory, Safety and Content Management. The legacy businesses have served the sector for some 15 years.

Navitas is poised to play a pivotal role as 'Expert Navigators' in interpreting market and regulatory change; driving collaboration across companies; seeking the simple solution to the complex problem; investing to enable the changes.

Our vision at Navitas is to be the best knowledge company in the life sciences R&D space by delivering the products, knowledge process outsourcing services and domain consulting expertise that the position entails. Navitas comprehensively covers consulting, technology and outsourcing (functional services) across the clinical, regulatory, safety and quality/compliance functions for the life sciences industry.

TAKE Solutions has been serving the life science sector for 15 years! Is there a specific reason why 2015 was chosen to launch the spin-off, Navitas?
We serve the pharma and biotech R&D, an underserved domain and a deep knowledge business. Over the last several years we have built a very strong portfolio of serving more than 100 customers globally. So, we want to give this business a very unique identity.

As our go-to-market strategy, we have given it a distinct brand identity with the name Navitas. Navitas will stand as a differentiated entity offering a high degree of specialization to meet the requirements of life science industry clients of varying sizes and complexity. We have already launched Navitas and it has been accepted very well in the market.

Will there be an addition to the portfolio of products or services offered by Navitas?
We have always believed in deep subject matter expertise in Life Sciences and all our investments to date reflect our vision of being a comprehensive and a global collaborative partner to the bio-pharmaceutical and medical device industry.

The growth in the industry has only highlighted the challenges of sustainable revenue growth with better margins against the backdrop of an increasingly stringent global regulatory regime. Navitas provides a very unique top down CxO advisory supported by collaborative industry networks.

We guide our customers through change management, governance, process overhaul and organization redesign and keep the industry well informed and hand-hold them through transformations. Navitas has adequately complemented this capability with organic technology offerings coupled with strategic partnerships with enterprise software companies.

We have a service enablement capability which is very operational oriented and provides high quality and cost effective, value-added outsourced services, as evidenced by our 'industry first' accomplishments of unit pricing per deliverable and other significant efficiency metrics. We are quite clear that this unique approach to solving problems is essential and we will be attempting to grow them all and contribute equally to our revenues.

Is there an untapped market (i.e. any other country) that Navitas plans to foray in the coming years?
Currently, the major markets driving growth are US and Europe. We have plans in place to expand into Japan by FY 2017.

If you were to compare India with other countries, what would be your observation about Indian drug manufacturers and medical device manufacturers meeting global regulatory and compliance requirements? If there is a gap, how can Navitas play a part to resolve the issue?
Companies in the US and Europe, which are higher up the maturity curve than their Indian counterparts, are looking for cost advantages along with better quality outsourced services. These services are focused on areas like patent management, clinical trial & quality control.

The branded/NCE research that these companies undertake necessitates innovation and adoption of cutting edge technologies to stay ahead of the curve. These companies are hence investing heavily in new technologies and concepts that are essential for discovery and R&D efforts, while looking to outsource staple services to vendors with reputation and economies of scale.

With this new spin-off are there any M&A plans?
It is too premature to think of that. We have quite a bit to grow in size in the Life sciences business. It is a great opportunity as it is a space that is growing fast and we want to give it our complete focus.

What is your human capital requirement plan for the next two years?
Our human capital growth will be determined by our business needs. Ours is not a linear business model. So additions will be more a step function. We may become twice our current size - say add another 1000 people.

What would be the business revenue generated by Navitas after three years?
We expect it to be about approximately $100 mn and more in three years.