“One of the emerging markets for SERVA is India”

—Dr Barbara Muller, managing director, SERVA
Electrophoresis GmbH, headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany is a supplier of  a range of reagents for electrophoresis and chromatography, precast gels for isoelectric focusing, carrier ampholytes, collagenases etc through its global distribution network. Here are the excerpts from an exclusive interview with Dr Barbara Muller, managing director, SERVA.

What is the current product portfolio of Serva?
SERVA offers top quality products for life sciences including fine biochemical reagents, electrophoresis consumables (including ready-to-use gels) and instruments, microbiology reagents and special enzymes for tissue disintegration.  For more than 50 years SERVA provides expertise in manufacture, development and distribution of products worldwide. This know-how is the platform for outstanding customer service. Our mission is to bring innovative products to the life sciences market to fulfill the needs of customers. Technical competence and total quality management are the basis for continuous improvement.

What are the best selling products of SERVA?
Our best selling specialty products comprise the range of reagents for protein electrophoresis – gels, ampholytes and markers, also used in  proteomics 2D applications, and the special grade (including GMP grade) collagenase enzymes for cell culture and isolation of organelles. The broad offering of the products include antibiotics, buffers, detergents, dialysis tubings, enzyme substrates, ion exchange media, peptones, stains and surfactants. The interest shown by scientists in our collagenases and electrophoresis reagents provided significant growth to SERVA’s specialty products, particularly in the Europe and Asian markets.

How much do the Indian sales contribute to the revenues?
We just started with Axygen in the Indian market in 2008. We have been supplying our products directly or indirectly (dealer) to some customers at research institutions in India over years but only with the excellent efforts from Axygen and their active promotion of  SERVA products we started to see an increase last year. Hence, the overall contribution from India to SERVA’s international business is still not very big, yet we expect to see continuous growth through the exclusive partnership with Axygen in future.

What are the emerging markets for the company?
SERVA provides services to 70 countries worldwide, mainly through global network of individual and independent partners. As a European company SERVA’s prime domain is the European market place, but certainly one of the emerging markets for SERVA is India. We also see growing interest in SERVA’s proprietary products and specialties from other countries in South-East Asia and China.

How do you look at India as a market for biotechnology suppliers ? What products are currently being marketed in India?
There is attractive market potential for SERVA’s specialties in cell culture and protein electrophoresis; but, there is a strong need for the range of fine chemicals in India, which is, of course, a very competitive market. Our fine chemical products feature top quality and consistent performance, our customers value this fact very much. SERVA is certified to ISO 9001:2000, and we dedicate our capacity and integrity to guarantee consistent product performance and continuity of supply.
Many Indian manufacturers seem to concentrate on supply of chemical products and intermediates to the fast growing pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Some of our bulk products are used in pharmaceutical production where consistent quality level is most important. But this is only a part of our business. Typically, SERVA offers reagents of research grade, featured in our main catalog. Those reagents are packaged in containers for analytical purposes in research laboratories.

What are your plans for the coming years in terms of revenue target, introducing new products and targetting new markets?
At SERVA, we maintain our own product development department mainly focused on applications in protein electrophoresis. This brings to the market a constant flow of new, innovative products (e.g., the range of SERVA precast gels) for bioseparation and particularly, proteomics. Also on offer are new special grade collagenases provided from our dedicated partner Nordmark Arzneimittel, a German producer of pharmaceuticals. Nordmark is the world’s largest manufacturer of GMP collagenase and SERVA as exclusive marketing partner aims to supply these products for new applications evolving in medical research.