How are Invitrogen products and business faring in India?
We have a variety of products like protein-to-protein interactions, reagents, and chemically defined agents. Many of these are animal-origin-based. So they are very useful for the processes that are concerned with regulatory issues. This business is growing. Biotechnology in India is beginning to exploit quite rapidly. We are already in contact with a few industrial customers and I am beginning to meet many of them as well. Further, some of the academic customers that we already have help us to expand our presence.

What are your plans for India?
We already have good business presence the world over and we are constantly working to improve it further. As far as R&D centers are concerned, we have many of them across the US and Europe. We have now started to build R&D centers across the world. In this attempt, we are now setting up an R&D center in India too. The infrastructure already exists in Bangalore, we just need to get in some people and start the development activity shortly.

What is your opinion on India's preparedness in improving its manufacturing facilities and GMP practices?
There are certain companies that are doing quite well and they are building facilities for processes to be able to compete on a global scale. And the number of such companies seems to be growing much faster than earlier. Certainly, the country is on the threshold of the global biotech radar.

What are some of the immediate things that the Indian biotech companies need to concentrate upon?
Paying attention to the regulatory bodies in compliance with the US and European markets is the need of the hour. Equally, there are certain things that need to be followed in terms of product development so as to get their products accepted in their chosen market.