"India tops our list in the CRO space"

-Greg Herrema, president, scientific instruments division, Thermo Fisher Scientific, USA

Greg Herrema, president of the scientific instruments division of Thermo Fisher Scientific since June 2006, has been responsible for the success of various business units of the company on a global basis. In an exclusive interview to BioSpecrum, during his maiden visit to India after he took over as the president, scientific instruments division at Thermo Fisher, Greg Herrema shares his views on the market opportunity in India. Excerpts of the interview:

How do you see the market opportunities for Thermo Fisher in Asia, especially from the CRO space?

The market for the analytical and instrumentation products is growing dramatically in China as companies are providing services for the pharma and biotechnology multinationals across the world. With that, the demand for analytical and clinical testing instruments has increased significantly. We are scaling up our investments and our teams locally. We are also evaluating the opportunities for increasing the manufacturing capabilities and local services to support that customer base. We serve the customers with our entire range of products and services. We want to be an active participant in this space in India and the Asia Pacific countries.

Which is the fastest growing CRO market in the Asia Pacific region?

India is the fastest growing market in the CRO space. The nature of the products and our positioning in the market is identical to what it is in the Europe and US. The product positioning is really identical. China too is growing well as an emerging market. At this juncture, India tops the list in the CRO space for our range of products. Though there are other markets besides India and China that are growing, I feel the major investments in the CRO sector are mostly happening in these two countries.

What are some of your important products that address the CROs?

We offer a whole range of instrumentations and sample preparatory equipment in the analytical space, chromatography, life sciences mass spectrometry, software for compliance and LIMS capabilities-all that in the core part. In the critical part, we offer reagents and consumables to support their assay development. Virtually, we serve every part of the workflow in CROs from sample preparation to analysis and data and information management through our range of products. Our focus is on providing a seamless and integrated type of approach to increase the productivity of the customers. The critical part is that it is growing. We see it as a key strategy to make sure that we can demonstrate and comply with most efficient and highest productivity workflow solutions to the customers.

Do you see competition in this space?

We face competition from the local organizations in a certain range of instrumentations, applications and consumables. However, at a broader level, the competition is similar in nature to that in the US or Europe. It is increasingly becoming more global in nature.

Narayan Kulkarni