A non-resident Indian scientist's pioneering nutraceuticals company in the United States, have won a coveted laurel in its 25th year of its celebration, as New Jersey-based Sabinsa Corporation of pharmacist-scientist Dr Muhammed Majeed bagged the Frost & Sullivan's 2013 North American Integrated Prebiotic Delivery Technology Innovation Award. The honour comes in recognition of the company's Integrated Nutritional Composites (INC) technology that allows it to create a combination of prebiotics and probiotics. The bi-layer "synbiotics" technology delivers stable and active formulation of ingredients which may otherwise be incompatible or difficult to co-formulate, thus assuring effective working, according to Bangalore-based Sami Labs Limited, which owns the 1988-founded Sabinsa. The benefit of the technology has already begun reaching its consumers in India through Sami Direct, the 2010-established marketing arm of the parent company.

Frost & Sullivan described Sabinsa's INC technology as, "an innovative, game-changing technology" in the prebiotic delivery and formulation market.

"The bi-layer tablets enable the integration of incompatible ingredients and help explore different time-release profiles of the ingredients. They are also quite attractive due to their two-tone appearance," said Ms Arpita Mukherjee, research analyst with the California-located firm that provides customer-dependent market research and analysis besides growth strategy consulting and corporate training services. "The technology can be used for formulating bi-layer tablets with chemically incompatible ingredients, providing more flexibility for formulation manufacturers to integrate ingredients in a single approach," she further added.

Sabinsa said the award validated the innovation that has always driven the company. "We're certainly honoured by this recognition," stated Dr Majeed, who migrated from his native Kerala to the US in 1975 to do his MS in industrial pharmacy from Long Island University and later a doctorate in the same field from St John's University, also in New York. Sabinsa had, earlier in 2008, received Frost & Sullivan's North American Personal Care Ingredient Green Excellence of the Year Award. That was in acknowledgment of its strategically balanced green product offering, proactive and sustainable marketing practices, and the continuous ability to satisfy client needs in an increasingly diverse and green-conscious market space.

Born in Chavara near Kollam, Dr Majeed had founded Sabinsa with the objective of importing and marketing generic drugs into the US for the drug molecules coming off patent. By delving deep into the science of herbs, the company developed the concept of nutraceuticals which is aligned to "food as medicine" - and soon introduced into the US market a new line of products based on Indian herbal plants.It was Dr Majeed who introduced to the Americans that Ayurveda from India can act as a complete curative to their various ailments. By 2000, it became popular as the complementary medicine, now called "integrated medicine".

Frost & Sullivan is in its 50th year in business with a global research organization of 1,800 analysts and consultants who monitor more than 300 industries and 2,50,000 companies. The company's research philosophy originates with the CEO's 360-Degree Perspective, which serves as the foundation of its TEAM Research methodology. This unique approach enables them to determine how best-in-class companies worldwide manage growth, innovation and leadership.